Last weekend, Elon Musk ignored his platform’s rules and posted a deepfake video of US Vice President Kamala Harris. The now-deleted post raises questions about X’s transparency compared to Twitter, which has not released a transparency report since Musk took ownership.
Remember Twitter Files? Shortly after Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter and began shaping it into his vision of an app for everything, he wanted to show how biased Twitter was.
While many praised the transparency, all it did was reveal that Twitter’s policy team struggled to make decisions when asked by government officials to remove content or accounts. Indeed, while Democrats were clearly Musk’s target, the documents reveal that Republicans had made requests to remove content as well.
Fast forward to 2024 and Twitter is gone, replaced by X, which is more closed off than Twitter. First, Twitter was a publicly traded company and had to publish financial statements revealing the company’s performance. Nowadays, a “graphic designer” publishes user numbers, but we don’t know where these numbers come from.
Despite years of flaunting freedom of speech, it has become clear that some people have it and others don’t. And that “some” seems to be limited to Musk’s friends and no one else. For example, some people can make racist remarks, while others can have their accounts immediately restricted for even calling a straight person cisgender.
But over the weekend, Musk took off his mask and showed the world that X is in fact a platform on which he can spread whatever nonsense he wants with impunity.
On Friday, the billionaire released a video showing off a deepfake of the voice of US Vice President Kamala Harris, with the doctored voice claiming that Harris is the Democratic candidate in the upcoming election. With President Joe Biden choosing to step down, the Democratic Party has yet to officially announce that Harris is its candidate.
The problem here is that Musk broke the rules of his own platform by posting manipulated media and not elaborating. Instead, he simply added, “This is amazing! ๐.” Indeed, the misinformation from the owner of a major social media platform is astonishing and shockingly horrifying. To be fair, the original poster of this video did label it as a parody, per X’s rules, but Musk did not.
“We believe what the American people want is the real freedom, opportunity and security that Vice President Harris is delivering, not the false, manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump,” Mia Ellenberg, a spokeswoman for Harris, told The Associated Press.
Throughout his ownership, Musk has demonstrated his disdain for anyone or organization that questions him or his motives. The platform he now owns has become a breeding ground for bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, and other abhorrent behavior. Much of this content and its publishers are allowed to remain on the platform because X has a free speech policy and no free reach policy, so as long as the content does not violate the law, it can remain on the platform.
However, there are instances where illegal content and publishers have been allowed to remain on X.
Musk also fought to keep violent videos on X.
Since Twitter Files went public, X has become even more closed off than Twitter. The API access that journalists and researchers used to evaluate the platform now comes with an admission fee that quickly becomes expensive, and the X Transparency page (which still mentions Twitter) has not featured any reports of government requests or content removals since July 28, 2022.
I realize that Company X is a private company and can do whatever it wants, but the lack of transparency is inconsistent with how Musk has acted since becoming an owner.
This lack of transparency will ultimately hurt Musk and X itself. Last week, a list was released alleging that certain individuals receive preferential treatment and are not punished for making derogatory comments. Typographical errors within the list lead to it being widely believed to be fake, but the lack of transparency could allow such theories to run wild on the platform.
Questions have already been raised about Musk’s nonpartisan behavior on X, something no other major tech CEO has done: Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg may donate to political parties they support, but they’re not posting deepfakes of potential candidates on major social networks to gain engagement.
As the US heads towards the 2024 elections, greater transparency is essential, especially regarding how information is spread on a platform like X. Weighting of posts and accounts, shadow bans, outright bans and clear policies on content need to be articulated by X and CEO Linda Yaccarino.
I can’t imagine that will happen, and we’ll probably have to endure further contradictions from X and its owners.
What else could we expect from a man who wears a Baphomet costume in his profile picture and claims that Christianity will perish “if we don’t have more courage to stand up for what is fair and right”?