The X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, says it is trying to take action on a flood of posts sharing graphic media, violent speech and hateful conduct about the war between Israel and Hamas.
The company said it is treating the crisis with its highest level of response. But outside watchdogs say misinformation about the war abounds on the platform that billionaire Elon Musk bought last year.
Musk maintains a policy often advocated by Musk of allowing users to 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 by Musk, who on Sunday posted the names of two accounts he said were 'good' for 'following the war in real-time'. One of those accounts, the Atlantic Council analyst Emerson Brooking of the Atlantic Council said was 'absolutely poisonous'. In addition, both 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 deleted his comment, which he later deleted.
Musk's massive transformations over the past year included gutting its workforce, including many of the individuals responsible for moderating toxic content and harmful misinformation.
A former member of Twitter's public policy team said the company is having a harder time taking action on posts that violate its policies because there aren't enough people to do that work.
s trust and safety team, and associated teams like public policy, to provide needed support during a critical time of crisis, said Theodora Skeadas, one of thousands of employees who lost their jobs in the months after Musk bought the company.
X says it recently 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. 's in the public's interest to understand what's happening in real time,' it said.
Linda Yaccarino, who Elon Musk named top executive in May, withdrew from an upcoming three-day tech conference where she was scheduled to speak, citing the need to focus on how its platform was handling the war.
X told the WSJ Tech Live conference that it will take place in Laguna Beach, California next week.