X, formerly known as Twitter, is currently recruiting for its safety and elections teams in preparation for the forthcoming 2024 US presidential elections. The platform will also allow political advertising again, thus lifting the critical ban that was imposed in 2019.
X announced the update in a blog post published on Tuesday. The company said it is expanding its safety and elections team to focus on combating manipulation, inauthentic accounts, and monitoring X for emerging threats during the election period. X’s measures to counter content compromising electoral processes will include public labels on misleading posts and restricting them.
X’s Civic Integrity Policy, which prohibits election manipulation and interference, will remain in place, according to the statement. The policy primarily covers the dissemination of content that could potentially mislead users about the details of civic processes such as voting and will be enforced for a “limited period of time before and during an election”.
The update arrives just days after former US president Donald Trump returned to X. Trump had been permanently suspended from the platform “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riots in 2021. The reinstatement of his account was announced earlier this year as part of Elon Musk’s “free speech” policy. It resulted in the reversal of a number of suspended accounts belonging to public figures known for their questionable behaviour on the platform.
Political advertising on X was banned in 2019 by then CEO Jack Dorsey. “This isn’t about free expression,” Dorsey had said in a thread. “This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address.”
Musk, who acquired X for $44 billion in October last year, has made various sweeping product changes (such as rebranding Twitter to X) and deep staff cuts at the company. Following his takeover, a number of crucial teams — including those working on human rights, ethical AI, and user safety — were laid off. Musk then monetised the blue checkmark for verified accounts, bundling it up with several other features in the “X Premium” subscription service.
The subscription, however, backfired when imposter accounts swarmed the platform with paid blue checks, and the service had to be rolled back briefly before being launched again. The platform went on to witness the departure of high-profile executives and ugly controversies that forced more advertisers to flee as they avoided their ads being displayed alongside potentially harmful or questionable content.
Since his acquisition, Musk has been trying to regain the trust of advertisers by claiming a decline in hateful content under his management and an exceptional user growth on the platform. However, research from various academic and advocacy groups has shown that hate speech has risen “dramatically” on X following Musk’s takeover. The billionaire even has sued a civil society organisation that reported on X’s inadequate handling of hateful content.
Recently, after placing TweetDeck (an online dashboard widely used by news organisations and various other businesses to organise and monitor content on X) behind the paywall, Musk announced removing the blocking feature, which is widely used to prevent harassment, bullying, and stalking. The suspension of the blocking feature could land X in trouble with Apple and Google’s parent company, as their guidelines for App Store and Google Play mandate the availability of the option to block accounts, including those propagating online abuse.
