Elon Musk has removed a vital feature on X – fake news could soon get a lot worse
Elon Musk has made drastic cuts to the “election integrity team” at
The announcement was made just weeks after the platform said it had plans to expand its security teams ahead of next year’s US presidential election. Musk turned to X to announce that the team had been disbanded in a typically blunt statement.
Following the team cuts, a feature that allows users to report misinformation has also been removed from the X platform.
Oh, you mean the “Election Integrity” team that undermined election integrity? Yes, they’re gone.September 27, 2023
Musk acquired the platform for $44 billion last year, and his latest move raises new concerns about X’s ability to curate information and content around major political events.
It follows a Study by the European Commission published by TrustLab, which showed that X has the highest percentage of disinformation spread across its content. The study analyzed the content of six social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube and X – that appeared in Poland, Slovakia and Spain.
The cuts to X’s election integrity team laid off more than half of its global team. It is uncertain how many people are still on the team. This also applies to the department in Ireland where X’s co-lead of ‘threat disruption’, Aaron Rodericks, was based.
Recently, Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, had done just that told The Financial Times that the platform was “expanding its security and election teams around the world to focus on combating issues such as tampering, the emergence of inauthentic accounts, and closely monitoring the platform for any new threats.”
This came after Elon Musk presented in a live-streamed interview that X could charge all users “a small monthly payment” to use the app, in addition to the existing Twitter Blue.
The feature that allowed users to report fake news on the platform has been missing since the study was published. It was spotted by Reset Australia, an organization that campaigns for democracy in digital media an open letter to X.
You can still report X messages that you consider spam and hateful; However, there is currently no way to report electoral disinformation. In the run-up to the US presidential election, other companies, including Google, have implemented plans to protect electoral information online, most recently in their effort to stamp out AI deepfakes in the presidential race by enforcing AI transparency policies.