Today, X released the company’s first transparency report since Elon Musk bought the company, formerly Twitter, in 2022, WIRED reported.
Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter would release transparency reports every six months. These largely cover the same grounds the new X report, giving specific numbers for takedowns, government requests for information, and content removals, as well as data about which content was reported and, in some cases, removed for violating policies.
The last transparency report available from Twitter covered the second half of 2021 and was 50 pages long. (X’s is a shorter 15 pages, but requests from governments are also listed elsewhere on the company’s website and have been consistently updated to remain in compliance with various government orders.)
While some numbers remain seemingly consistent across the reports, — reports of abuse and harassment are, somewhat, predictably high — in other areas, there’s a stark difference. For instance, in the 2021 report, accounts reported for hateful content accounted for nearly half of all reports, and 1 million of the 4.3 million accounts actioned. In the new X report, the company says it has taken action on only 2,361 accounts for posting hateful conduct.
The Hill reported the social platform X released its first transparency report since billionaire Elon Musk acquired the company nearly two years ago.
The Global Transparency Report, released Wednesday, provided data about user reports on content violating X’s rules and enforcement actions taken by the company, as well as government requests for information and content removals in the first half of 2024.
“Transparency is at the core of what we do at X,” a spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill. “As an entirely new company, we took time to rethink how best to transparently share data related to the enforcement of the policies that keep our community safe.”
X received more than 224 million user reports between January and June, according to the report. The largest share of user reports — nearly 82 million — were about abuse and harassment.
Nearly 67 million user reports were in regard to hateful conduct, and another 40 million were about violent conduct.
Engadget reported X has published its most detailed accounting of its content moderation practices since Elon Musk’s takeover of the company. The report, X’s first in more than a year, provides insight into how X is enforcing its rules as it struggles to hang on to advertisers who have raised concerns about toxicity on the platform.
The report, which details content takedowns and account suspensions from the first half of 2024, shows that suspensions have more than tripled since the last time the company shared data. X suspended just under 5.3 million accounts during the period, compared with 1.6 million suspensions during the first six months of 2022.
In my opinion, it seems that X has a haphazard way of determining what accounts to remove, which ones to place a label on, and a lot of potential problems with trying to encourage brands to stay on the platform.