X’s First Transparency Report Since Elon Musk’s Takeover Is Finally Here

Today, X released the company’s archetypal transparency study since Elon Musk bought the company, formerly Twitter, successful 2022.

Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter would merchandise transparency reports each six months.These mostly covered the aforesaid crushed arsenic the caller X report, giving circumstantial numbers for takedowns, authorities requests for information, and contented removals, arsenic good arsenic information astir which contented was reported and, successful immoderate cases, removed for violating policies. The past transparency study disposable from Twitter covered the second fractional of 2021 and was 50 pages long. (X’s is simply a shorter 15 pages, but requests from governments are besides listed elsewhere connected the company’s website and person been consistently updated to stay successful compliance with assorted authorities orders.)

Comparing the 2021 study to the existent X transparency study is simply a spot difficult, arsenic the mode the institution measures antithetic things has changed. For instance, successful 2021, 11.6 cardinal accounts were reported. Of this 11.6 million, 4.3 cardinal were “actioned” and 1.3 cardinal were suspended. According to the caller X report, determination were implicit 224 cardinal reports, of some accounts and pieces of idiosyncratic content, but the effect was 5.2 cardinal accounts being suspended.

While immoderate numbers stay seemingly accordant crossed the reports—reports of maltreatment and harassment are, somewhat predictably, high—in different areas, there’s a stark difference. For instance, successful the 2021 report, accounts reported for hateful contented accounted for astir fractional of each reports, and 1 cardinal of the 4.3 cardinal accounts actioned. (The reports utilized to beryllium interactive connected the website; the existent PDF nary longer allows users to flip done the information for much granular breakdowns.) In the caller X report, the institution says it has taken enactment connected lone 2,361 accounts for posting hateful content.

But this whitethorn beryllium owed to the information that X’s policies person changed since it was Twitter, which Theodora Skeadas, a erstwhile subordinate of Twitter’s nationalist argumentation squad who helped enactment unneurotic its Moderation Research Consortium, says mightiness alteration the mode the numbers look successful a transparency report. For instance, past twelvemonth the institution changed its policies connected hatred speech, which antecedently covered misgendering and deadnaming, and rolled backmost its rules astir Covid-19 misinformation successful November of 2022.

“As definite policies person been modified, immoderate contented is nary longer violative. So if you're looking astatine changes successful the prime of experience, that mightiness beryllium hard to seizure successful a transparency report,” she says.

X has besides lost users since Musk’s takeover, further complicating what the caller world of the level mightiness look like. “If you relationship for changing usage, is it a little number?” she asks.

After taking implicit the institution successful October of 2022, Musk fired the bulk of the company’s spot and information unit arsenic good arsenic its argumentation staff, the radical who marque the platform’s rules and guarantee they’re enforced. Under Musk, the company besides began charging for its API, making it harder for researchers and nonprofits to entree X information to spot what was truly going connected on the platform. This whitethorn besides relationship for changes betwixt the 2 reports.