Log in

X releases its first transparency report since Elon Musk's takeover

Posted 9/25/24

Social media platform X published its first transparency report on Wednesday. The report is the first since the company was purchased by Elon Musk two years ago. It details content moderation …

You must be a member to read this story.

Join our family of readers for as little as $5 per month and support local, unbiased journalism.


Already have an account? Log in to continue.

Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here

Otherwise, follow the link below to join.

To Our Valued Readers –

Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.

For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.

Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.

Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.

Sincerely,
Charlene Bisson, Publisher, Independent Newsmedia

Please log in to continue

Log in
I am anchor

X releases its first transparency report since Elon Musk's takeover

Posted

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Social media platform X on Wednesday published its first transparency report since the company was purchased by Elon Musk. The report, which details content moderation practices, shows the company has removed millions of posts and accounts from the site in the first half of the year.

X, formerly Twitter, suspended nearly 5.3 million accounts in that time, compared with the 1.6 million accounts the company reported suspending in the first half of 2022. The social media company also “removed or labeled” more than 10.6 million posts for violating platform rules — about 5 million of which it categorized as violating its “hateful conduct” policy.

Posts containing “violent content” — 2.2 million — or “abuse and harassment” — 2.6 million — also accounted for a large portion of content that was labeled or removed. The company does not distinguish between how many posts were removed and how many were labeled.

In an April 2023 blog post published in lieu of a transparency report, by contrast, the company said it required users to remove 6.5 million pieces of content that violated the company’s rules in the first six months of 2022, an increase of 29% from the second half of 2021.

Some have blamed Musk for turning a fun platform into one that’s chaotic and toxic. Musk has previously posted conspiracy theories and feuded with world leaders and politicians. X is currently banned in Brazil amid a dustup between Musk and a Brazilian Supreme Court judge over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.

To enforce their rules, X said, the company uses a combination of machine learning and human review. The automated systems either take action or surface the content to human moderators. Posts violating X's policy accounted for less than 1% of all content on the site, the company said.

When Musk was trying to buy Twitter in 2022, he said he was doing so because it wasn’t living up to its potential as a “platform for free speech.” Since acquiring the company that October, Musk has fired much of its staff and made other changes, leading to a steady exodus of celebrities, public figures, organizations and ordinary people from the platform.