Twitter X’s account suspensions have more than quadrupled since Elon Musk bought the company, the social platform reported Wednesday. At the same time, Twitter X is censoring significantly less content and accounts for violating its “hate content” policies than it did before Musk bought the company.
This may seem contradictory, so let’s look at the numbers a little more closely.
Key takeaways: According to X.com’s new global transparency report, the company suspended 5.3 million accounts in the first half of 2024. This is the company’s first report since Musk took over in 2022. This marks a 307% increase in suspensions compared to the previous report, which looked at the second half of 2021. In the previous report, 1.3 million accounts were suspended.
What’s behind the sharp increase in account suspensions? X.com is pursuing more accounts for violating its rules for kids, with 2.78 million accounts being punished for violating the company’s “child safety” policies.
According to X’s rules, the policy is “designed to protect minors from sexual and physical abuse, and from the emotional harm that may result from the sharing of such content.” This category includes content “including child sexual exploitation, media of child physical abuse, and media of physical conflict between minors.”
In late 2021, the company, then known as Twitter, suspended roughly 600,000 accounts for violating its rules against child sexual exploitation.
What X has done less is censor content that violates its “hateful conduct” policies: In the first half of 2024, X suspended 2,361 accounts for policy violations, 97.9% fewer than in 2021, when the company was still run by Jack Dorsey.
X’s “hateful conduct” policy states that users may not “directly attack others because of their race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, religion, age, disability, or serious disease.”
Since taking over at Twitter, Musk has said he wants to prioritize free speech more than the previous administration.
“Freedom of speech is the foundation of democracy,” Musk posted earlier this year. “That’s why it’s the First Amendment. Without free speech, all is lost.”
There are a few other things worth pointing out in Wednesday’s report, including the number of posts being removed: X removed or added labels to 10.68 million posts in the first half of 2024, and removed 5.1 million posts in the second half of 2021, the company said.
Under Musk’s leadership, X has also taken further action against accounts that violate its “abuse and harassment” rules: X has suspended 1.1 million accounts for violating this policy, about 70,000 more than in the 2021 report.
Click here to read the full X Transparency Report.