Elon Musk Takes Ax to Twitter's 'Election Integrity Team' - Report
Last month, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter announced that it would be hiring more people to guard the platform against use by bad actors.
“We’re currently expanding our safety and elections teams to focus on combating manipulation, surfacing inauthentic accounts and closely monitoring the platform for emerging threats,” the X Safety blog stated in an August 29 post.
This week, however, a report from The Information (behind a paywall) cited by the left-leaning New York Daily News claims that the opposite is true — that X is cutting its “election integrity team” by half.
The Information cited three unnamed individuals who it said were “familiar with the situation.”
“The cuts come less than a month after the company said it would expand the team and as X faces renewed criticism from the European Commission over the volume of misinformation on its platform,” The Information, a San Francisco-based online publisher covering the tech industry.
“Meantime, other social media companies are gearing up to deal with disinformation and artificial intelligence during next year’s presidential elections in the U.S.,” the report claimed.
The Daily News quoted European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova as claiming that, when it comes to disinformation on social media, X has a larger problem to deal with than other platforms.
X is “the platform with the largest ratio of mis- or disinformation posts,” Jourova said during a Tuesday news conference, according to the Daily News, citing a report from the European Union’s executive arm that looked into social media in Poland, Slovakia and Spain.
“There are obligations given by the hard law, so my message for Twitter is: ‘You have to comply with the hard law, and we will be watching what you are doing,’” Jourova said.
The news conference was held in conjunction with an “update” on the EU’s 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation, a code that Google, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok are purportedly following on a voluntary basis, but which Twitter, now X, disassociated itself from after Elon Musk purchased the company.
According to a separate Daily News article, much of that code has become law in the EU, making voluntary compliance largely meaningless.
Jourova blamed much of the disinformation on social media sites on Russia, which she accused of warring against democratic ideas.
Through social media, Russia has created “a multimillion-euro weapon of mass manipulation aimed both internally at the Russians as well as at Europeans and the rest of the world,” she said.
X has repeatedly stated its policy of “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach,” under which most posts will be allowed to remain on the platform, but subject to its Civic Integrity Policy that seeks to prevent spreading misinformation without censoring political comment.
A request by the writer for comment sent via X to the X Safety and Twitter Communications teams did not receive a response from the company.
The Daily News noted that when it sought comment, X replied, “Busy now, please check back later.”
In August, X stated in a blog post that its work to ensure “open, accurate and safe political discourse” on the platform was “ongoing.”
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