Elon Musk bought Twitter with a pledge to make it a bastion of free speech. Musk quickly reinstated some previously suspended accounts, including those of Alex Jones and Donald Trump. But a new report from Company X shows that the company has suspended more accounts on average than Twitter. I’ve done it before.
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Company X’s new “transparency report” may come as a surprise to anyone who has heard its owner, Elon Musk, talk about the importance of free speech.
Before Musk bought Twitter in 2022, the social media site published reports twice a year detailing statistics on data requests, copyright notices, user reports of violations, and suspensions. โTransparency Reportsโ were typically 50 pages or more in length.
Three years after Musk took control of the company and rebranded it as “X,” the company has finally released a new transparency report. And the results are amazing.
Under Musk’s leadership, X suspended more than four times as many accounts (5.3 million) in the first half of 2024 than Twitter ever did in a similar period. Twitter suspended approximately 873,000 accounts in the second half of 2019, according to a transparency report at the time. That number increased to approximately 1.3 million account suspensions in the second half of 2021.
X said recent suspensions were related to child safety, abuse and harassment, and misleading identity.
A spokesperson for Company X did not immediately respond to questions about the spike in suspended accounts.
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Musk reinstated some high-profile accounts previously suspended by Twitter, including former President Donald Trump and Infowars’ Alex Jones, but also the account of a student who tracked private jet flights. Other accounts were also suspended.
On Thursday, X also suspended journalist Ken Klippenstein’s account after he published a 271-page document about J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election. An X spokesperson told CNN that Klippenstein’s suspension was triggered by the inclusion of a candidate’s home address and portion of his Social Security number.
Musk is a supporter of Trump and is rumored to be a candidate for Cabinet if Trump ultimately wins.
Mr. Musk, who describes himself as a free speech absolutist, has repeatedly capitulated to the government’s demands for tighter restrictions on free speech. In Brazil, for example, after months of defying a Supreme Court order to remove accounts it deemed dangerous to democracy, X finally acquiesced last week after hefty fines and a nationwide ban. Musk also agreed to government requests to delete his accounts in Tรผrkiye and India.
Musk fired much of Twitter’s staff after the acquisition. That included Trust and Safety employees who were dealing with misinformation and other content moderation issues on the platform. A recent study found that X is the least trusted technology company.