X is falling apart under Elon Musk

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This article was published 24/08/2024 (455 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Concerns over Elon Musk’s purchase of X, formerly Twitter, have been validated.

When the tech magnate bought the social media platform in October 2022, his hands-off approach to content moderation was anticipated to turbocharge falsehoods, fuel vitriol and repel advertisers.

All three predictions have since come true.

While managing to grow his other companies, such as Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is doing the exact opposite to X.

The self-described “free speech absolutist” has gravely diminished a site once central to the global information ecosystem. Its reputation as the world’s digital town square now rings hollow — evidenced by events just this past month alone.

The xenophobic uproar that roiled the U.K. in late July after the fatal stabbing of three children at a Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance class was stoked by misinformation that X allowed to go viral. Far-right figures, including toxic manosphere influencer Andrew Tate, shared posts declaring falsely that the attack was perpetrated by a Muslim asylum seeker.

This continued even after police confirmed the assailant was actually a British citizen, born in Wales to Rwandan parents, with no ties to Islam.

Nevertheless, thousands of loosely organized rioters across some two dozen cities attacked mosques and immigrant-owned businesses. More than 100 police officers were injured while trying to contain the unrest.

In Sudan, the platform has facilitated digital propaganda campaigns amid the country’s raging civil war. A rogue militia accused of crimes against humanity in Darfur continues to leverage X to brand themselves as benevolent champions of democracy.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — a paramilitary group led by a warlord known as “Hemedti” — posts daily videos showing its personnel distributing aid supplies and visiting children’s classrooms and displacement camps.

Yet wherever they have gained ground, Hemedti’s fighters have terrorized civilians, sexually assaulted women, looted homes and ransacked museums. Such actions clearly violate X’s policy against violent and hateful entities. Still, there have been no consequences for RSF accounts, which have a combined half a million followers.

These examples, along with many others, stem from Musk’s decision to fire thousands of content moderation staff immediately after acquiring Twitter. He also abolished the company’s trust and safety advisory team. Comprised of civil society representatives and human rights organizations, it helped guide the handling of troubling content and users. Researchers suggest incidents of hate speech on the platform have since doubled.

Perhaps the most prolific vector of misinformation is Musk himself. He has routinely amplified anti-vaccine messaging, antisemitic tropes and discrimination against transgender persons to his more than 195 million followers. Musk has also endorsed the great replacement theory — a racist deception that Western liberal elites are encouraging mass migration to disenfranchise white voters.

Meanwhile, thousands of accounts previously blocked for posting egregious lies have been restored. This includes those of Donald Trump and conspiracy merchant Alex Jones.

Musk has also used the platform to launch his own artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, which he promotes as having an “anti-woke” personality. Yet X is facing at least nine privacy complaints concerning the bot in the European Union, where plaintiffs allege it’s being trained on users’ data without their consent.

The European Commission already said last December that X is violating rules enshrined in the continent’s Digital Services Act, which seeks to limit disinformation and harmful online content. A further EU investigation is ongoing. If the probe confirms the company is in breach of the legislation, X could be fined up to six per cent of its global revenue.

Such a bruising financial penalty would come at a very bad time for the company. Its earnings are already drying up as advertisers flee elsewhere. Estimated ad revenue has declined 24 per cent so far this year, a loss of US$238 million compared to the first six months of 2023. In March, Musk admitted that X’s valuation has shrunk to US$20 billion — less than half the US$44 billion he paid for it.

Technical failings are becoming commonplace as well. The start of a recent, much-hyped livestream discussion between Musk and Donald Trump was delayed by more than 40 minutes. Musk claimed unconvincingly and without evidence this was caused by a supposed cyberattack. Yet once it launched, the entire two-hour conversation was still plagued by poor audio.

Musk’s purchase of Twitter less than two years ago is resembling a vanity project gone seriously awry. It is a warning too, for how quickly digital infrastructure can deteriorate when it falls into the hands of a mercurial private actor. Especially one whose aim is to elevate their own personal agenda above all else.

Kyle Hiebert is a Winnipeg-based political risk analyst, and former deputy editor of the Africa Conflict Monitor.