The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, says it is struggling with a flood of posts sharing graphic media, violent speech and hateful conduct about the Israel-Hamas war. But it has received a broadside of criticism, including from a top European Union official, questioning the adequacy of the response.
Outside watchdog groups said misinformation about the war abounds on the platform, 鈥 including its content moderation team 鈥 was gutted by billionaire Elon Musk after he bought it last year.
Fake and manipulated imagery circulating on X include 鈥渞epurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games,鈥 said a to Musk from European Commissioner Thierry Breton. "This appears to be manifestly false or misleading information.鈥
Breton, the EU's digital rights chief, also warned Musk that authorities have been flagging 鈥減otentially illegal content鈥 that and 鈥測ou must be timely, diligent and objective鈥 in removing it when warranted.
San Francisco-based X didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about Breton's letter.
A from X鈥檚 safety team claimed it is treating the crisis with utmost effort: 鈥淚n the past couple of days, we鈥檝e seen an increase in daily active users on @X in the conflict area, plus there have been more than 50 million posts globally focusing on the weekend鈥檚 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. As the events continue to unfold rapidly, a cross-company leadership group has assessed this moment as a crisis requiring the highest level of response.鈥
That includes continuing a policy frequently championed by Musk of letting users help rate what might be misinformation, which causes those posts to include a note of context but not disappear from the platform.
The struggle to identify reliable sources for news about the war was exacerbated over the weekend by Musk, who on Sunday posted the names of two accounts he said were 鈥済ood鈥 for 鈥渇ollowing the war in real-time.鈥 Analyst Emerson Brooking of the Atlantic Council called one of those accounts 鈥渁bsolutely poisonous.鈥 Journalists and X users also pointed out that both accounts had previously shared a fake AI-generated image of an explosion at the Pentagon, and that one of them had posted numerous antisemitic comments in recent months. Musk later deleted his post.
Brooking posted on X that Musk had enabled fake war reporting by abandoning the blue check verification system for trusted accounts and allowing anyone to buy a blue check.
Brooking said Tuesday that it is 鈥渟ignificantly harder to determine ground truth in this conflict as compared to Russia鈥檚 invasion of Ukraine鈥 last year and 鈥淓lon Musk bears personal responsibility for this.鈥
He said Musk鈥檚 changes to the X platform have made it impossible to quickly assess the credibility of accounts while his 鈥渋ntroduction of view monetization has created perverse incentives for war-focused accounts to post as many times as possible, even unverified rumors, and to make the most salacious claims possible.鈥
鈥淲ar is always a cauldron of tragedy and disinformation; Musk has made it worse,鈥 he added. Further, Brooking said via email 鈥淢usk has repeatedly and purposefully denigrated the idea of an objective media, and he made platform design decisions that undermine such reporting. We now see the result.鈥
Part of Musk's drastic changes over the past year included removing many of the people responsible for moderating toxic content and harmful misinformation.
One former member of Twitter鈥檚 public policy team said the company is having a harder time taking action on posts that violate its policies because there to do that work.
鈥淭he layoffs are undermining the capacity of Twitter鈥檚 trust and safety team, and associated teams like public policy, to provide needed support during a critical time of crisis,鈥 said Theodora Skeadas, one of thousands of employees who lost their jobs in the months after Musk bought the company.
X says it changed one policy over the weekend to enable people to more easily choose whether or not to see sensitive media without the company actually taking down those posts.
鈥淴 believes that, while difficult, it鈥檚 in the public鈥檚 interest to understand what鈥檚 happening in real time,鈥 its statement said.
The company said it is also removing newly created Hamas-affiliated accounts and working with other tech companies to try to prevent 鈥渢errorist content鈥 from being distributed online. It said it is 鈥渁lso continuing to proactively monitor for antisemitic speech as part of all our efforts. Plus we鈥檝e taken action to remove several hundred accounts attempting to manipulate trending topics.鈥
Linda Yaccarino, as the top executive at X, withdrew from an upcoming three-day tech conference where she was scheduled to speak, citing the need to focus on how the platform was handling the war.
鈥淲ith the global crisis unfolding, Linda and her team must remain fully focused on X platform safety,鈥 X told the organizers of the WSJ Tech Live conference being held next week in Laguna Beach, California.
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Associated Press writer Ali Swenson contributed to this report.
