X releases first transparency report since Elon Musk’s takeover

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Social media platform X on Wednesday revealed its first transparency report for the reason that firm was bought by Elon Musk. The report, which particulars content material moderation practices, reveals the corporate has eliminated hundreds of thousands of posts and accounts from the location within the first half of the 12 months.

X, previously Twitter, suspended almost 5.3 million accounts in that point, in contrast with the 1.6 million accounts the corporate reported suspending within the first half of 2022. The social media firm additionally “eliminated or labeled” greater than 10.6 million posts for violating platform guidelines — about 5 million of which it categorized as violating its “hateful conduct” coverage.

Posts containing “violent content material” — 2.2 million — or “abuse and harassment” — 2.6 million — additionally accounted for a big portion of content material that was labeled or eliminated. The corporate doesn’t distinguish between what number of posts had been eliminated and what number of had been labeled.

In an April 2023 weblog put up revealed in lieu of a transparency report, against this, the corporate mentioned it required customers to take away 6.5 million items of content material that violated the corporate’s guidelines within the first six months of 2022, a rise of 29% from the second half of 2021.

Some have blamed Musk for turning a enjoyable platform into one which’s chaotic and poisonous. Musk has beforehand posted conspiracy theories and feuded with world leaders and politicians. X is at present banned in Brazil amid a dustup between Musk and a Brazilian Supreme Court docket choose over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.

To implement their guidelines, X mentioned, the corporate makes use of a mix of machine studying and human assessment. The automated programs both take motion or floor the content material to human moderators. Posts violating X’s coverage accounted for lower than 1% of all content material on the location, the corporate mentioned.

When Musk was making an attempt to purchase Twitter in 2022, he mentioned he was doing so as a result of it wasn’t residing as much as its potential as a “platform free of charge speech.” Since buying the corporate that October, Musk has fired a lot of its employees and made different modifications, resulting in a gentle exodus of celebrities, public figures, organizations and abnormal folks from the platform.