Twitter under Elon Musk
Issues such as the release of the Twitter Files, suspension of journalists' accounts, and temporary measures like labeling media outlets as "state-affiliated" and restricting their visibility have sparked criticism.
Having previously restored Tommy Robinson's account, Musk interacted with him on the platform,[54][55][56][57] and went on to refer to Starmer as "two-tier Keir" and ask the protection of communities in Britain.
[95] In June 2023, trust and safety chief Ella Irwin resigned,[96][97] hours after Musk undid a company moderation decision by unrestricting and reposting The Daily Wire's anti-trans documentary What Is a Woman?.
Additionally, Basic tier provides organizational tools such as bookmark folders, access to the most shared articles from followed accounts, and a reader mode for simplified reading of long conversation threads.
[163] Algorithm changes promoted viral disinformation about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and led to significant gains in followers for media outlets affiliated with Russia, China and Iran.
[174] A European Commission study found that disinformation was most prevalent and received the highest relative engagement on Twitter, compared to other major social networks,[175][176] leading to warnings of a potential ban or fines by the EU for non-compliance with the Digital Services Act.
[181][182][183][184] In August 2024, several Labour MPs in the United Kingdom reduced their use of Twitter or left the platform due to concerns about misinformation and hate speech under Musk's ownership.
[190] Twitter insiders told BBC Panorama they were struggling to protect users from trolling and harassment, including misogynistic online hate, and the targeting of rape survivors.
[191] From a study of over 1 million tweets since 2022, the CCDH reported that posts associating LGBT people with "grooming" increased by 119 percent since October 2022, with advertising also appearing alongside what many deemed anti-LGBT rhetoric.
[208][209] The number of staff on Twitter's trust and safety teams were reduced, for example, leaving one full-time staffer to handle all child sexual abuse material in the Asia-Pacific region in November 2022.
[213] In March 2024, The Intelligencer reported on the proliferation of spam posts containing the phrase "░P░U░S░S░Y░I░N░B░I░O░", or similar references to pornographic content appearing in the poster's bio, apparently formatted so as to evade counter-spam measures.
Defending his decision to suspend the accounts, Musk declared a ban on doxxing real-time location data, and Twitter followed suit by updating its policies page.
Twitter's previous policy had explicitly mentioned NPR, as well as the United Kingdom's BBC, as examples of networks that were not considered state-affiliated due to their editorial independence.
[263][266] In an email to the staff explaining the decision, CEO John Lansing allowed individual NPR journalists and staffers to choose for themselves whether to keep using Twitter, while noting that remaining on the site "would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here".
[259][264] On April 17, Canadian public broadcaster CBC was designated as "government-funded media" by Twitter, in response to a letter from Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre.
[276][277][278] In June, on the first day of Pride Month, Musk confirmed that a policy against misgendering wouldn't be enforced, and that in his opinion "Whether or not you agree with using someone’s preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws".
[305] That same month, analysis from The Washington Post found that X was delaying links to external social media sites such as those owned by Meta Platforms, Substack, Bluesky, as well as Reuters and The New York Times, all companies that Musk has had grudges with.
[306][307][308] Later that month, Fortune reported that Musk was planning to remove headlines and other text from news articles posted on Twitter,[309][310] with the change taking effect in October 2024.
In October 2023, X began charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines an annual fee of $1 in order to use basic features such as posting, replying and quoting tweets, as part of a pilot program.
[314] The following month, Musk declared on X that users who use the phrases "decolonization" and "from the river to the sea", commonly used by activists calling for a Palestinian state, as well as "similar euphemisms", would be suspended.
According to Musk, the phrases imply genocide of Jewish people, as well as "clear calls for extreme violence", against the terms of service of the platform, and was welcomed by ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt.
[330] According to an analysis by the Digital Forensic Research Lab, the change had already taken effect since around March 29, when Twitter stopped filtering government accounts in Russia, China and Iran.
[331][332] The study, which looked at more than 56,000 posts, identified a system-wide "structural break" on the platform around July 13, 2024, a date which coincides with Elon Musk's endorsement of Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election.
[332] On January 17, 2025, the European Commission requested to see Twitter's internal documentation about its algorithms "and any recent changes made to it", following accusations of manipulation benefitting far-right viewpoints.
[344] Musk also met with advertisers via Twitter Spaces to outline his plans to fulfill his pre-acquisition pledges, previewing forthcoming features and allaying fears of a rise in disinformation and hate speech, referencing the crowd-sourced Community Notes program.
After acquiring Twitter on October 28, 2022, CEO Elon Musk provided these documents to journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and authors Michael Shellenberger, David Zweig, and Alex Berenson.
[370] On November 16, 2023, Media Matters published analysis indicating Twitter was placing major client advertisements next to user posts containing antisemitic content, including praise for Adolf Hitler and Nazis.
In November 2022, author Stephen King, U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and U.S. senator Ed Markey criticized Musk's decision to charge Twitter users for the blue checkmark.
[435] Jason Wilson of the Southern Poverty Law Center criticized Musk's perceived disinterest in "policing hate speech", observing an increase in verified white nationalists and other far-right extremists.
[453][454] Analysis conducted by research firm Sensor Tower in October 2023 found that global active daily users of X via mobile apps had steadily declined during the year after Musk acquired the company, down 16% by September 2023, while the metric showed positive growth for five other major social media platforms.
