On July 9, the US government sanctioned United Nations Human Rights Council special rapporteur Francesca Albanese for what the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said was a "campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States."

Albanese has consistently denounced Israel's actions in Gaza since its offensive against the Palestinian militant group Hamas began in October 2023, as well as the Trump administration's efforts to suppress dissenting voices critical of Israel.

The announcement was rejected by the UN, which called for a reversal of the sanctions, and it also prompted a debate online, where Albanese's name began to trend on X (formerly Twitter).

Posts poured in both defending and criticizing her work, accompanied in several cases by "Community Notes," X's signature tool to fight misinformation. The notes, which are essentially brief clarifications or extra context attached to posts, can be submitted by anyone.

X claims it uses what it calls a "bridging algorithm" to prevent bias, lending more weight to upvotes from users with historically different viewpoints and thus theoretically reducing the chance that a single group can dominate the narrative.

But that doesn't make them immune from error. In the case of Albanese, for instance, one community note claimed that "Francesca Albanese is not a lawyer," amplifying arguments by her critics about her qualifications and "ethical conduct."

While Albanese did admit in an interview with Vanity Fair that she didn't take the bar exam, which would have qualified her as a practising attorney, she did study law. Her official

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