Social media platform X has released its first transparency report since Elon Musk took over the company in October 2022.
Before Musk’s takeover, the company, then Twitter, released transparency reports twice a year annually since 2012. However, when Musk took over the company, he put a stop to this. He was open about his reasons for doing so, saying he wanted to fight against “bullying” from the government and prioritize data privacy.
Two years later, Musk and X have changed their stance. On the new transparency center website, X states:
“It is now more important than ever that we shine a light on our own practices, including enforcement of the X Rules and our ongoing work to disrupt global state-backed information operations. The public and policy makers want to be better informed about our actions and we recognize these calls for greater transparency.”
X Transparency Report
The report illustrates the company’s content moderation practices and shows that they removed a staggering amount of posts and accounts in the first half of 2024.
X suspended close to 5.3 million accounts in just six months, much more than Twitter, which had suspended 1.6 million accounts in the same time frame in 2022. Across all policy areas, X has removed or labeled more than 10.6 million posts. The Abuse and Harassment policy has had the most removed or labeled posts at more than 2.6 million. X does not specify the number of removed or labeled posts individually.
Meanwhile, the Child Safety policy has had the most account suspensions, with almost 2.8 million accounts suspended. However, the policy has only removed or labeled about 14 thousand posts.
Musk’s controversies with X
The transparency report comes after the Brazilian Supreme Court banned X. CEO Elon Musk has previously antagonized world leaders with platform posts and has been accused of changing it for the worse.
The Brazilian Supreme Court was concerned about Musk’s impact when he posts and the platform’s influence on users.
Musk, who took over the platform hoping to encourage free speech for all, has fired multiple people from the company and banned and suspended more accounts than the platform previously did prior to his takeover. The company claims that the posts that broke their policy rules made up less than one percent of the content on the platform.
Musk himself has posted a lot of controversial content on the platform. When the second assassination attempt on Trump happened, Musk tweeted in a since-deleted post, “No one is even trying to assassinate Harris/Biden.” He later wrote off the post as a joke, but the White House condemned him for the post anyway.
