A collaborative digital field study shows that community-led interventions can minimize engagement with online falsehoods

False information can erode democratic legitimacy and incite violence. Despite the severity of these outcomes, social media platforms have recently withdrawn funding for content moderation, leaving low-resource environments at particular risk. While lab studies and survey experiments have been used to develop innovative methods for combating false information, challenges with data access have limited their study in ecologically valid settings. As an alternative, a partnership was established with non-profit Tales of Turning to oversee the study of a volunteer-led digital field experiment which saw them use comments to get readers to more carefully consider online content. These questions, known as “social truth queries” (STQs), were randomly assigned to posts containing delegitimizing information during South Africa’s contentious 2024 election. Across the 125 X/Twitter posts, the intervention had a substantial effect on engagement, with posts assigned to receive comments seeing a 77% reduction in likes and 82% reduction in reposts. Critically, the effect of the intervention was dependent on its timing, with the impact largest when STQs were applied quickly. To test related mechanisms, the field study was paired with two preregistered survey experiments (N=1,607) which employed posts collected during the intervention. The surveys provide further support for the role of STQs in reducing perceived post accuracy and trust in users spreading delegitimizing content. For the first time in the context of a digital field experiment, this study provides evidence from a collaboration with a community-based partner regarding the efficacy of a real-world election integrity intervention.