Billionaire Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, is laying the groundwork for 2024 election censorship, according to recent policy and hiring posts.
X will be implementing additional censorship policies during the time period around the 2024 election, it announced on Tuesday. The company intends to guarantee “an accurate and safe political discourse” and is also hiring people to tackle election-related “disinformation” on the platform, according to an X job description for information operations senior specialists posted on Aug. 11.
X updated its Civic Integrity Policy and will enable political advertising as well as increase its Community Notes tool, which allows certain individuals to “add context to posts,” according to the announcement. Its new Civic Integrity Policy empowers X to “label or remove false or misleading information about how to participate in an election or other civic process.”
“During elections, our Civic Integrity Policy provides an extra layer of protection that is applied for a limited period of time before and during an election,” X states in its Tuesday announcement. “We’re updating this policy to make sure we strike the right balance between tackling the most harmful types of content—those that could intimidate or deceive people into surrendering their right to participate in a civic process—and not censoring political debate.”
Moreover, the updated policy adheres to X’s “freedom of speech, not reach” enforcement doctrine, allowing people to post what they want but suppressing content that breaks rules so others are far less likely to see it. (RELATED: Judge Denies RFK Jr’s Request For Restraining Order Against YouTube’s Censorship)
X has a responsibility to put the right systems in place to ensure our communities have access to open, accurate, and safe political discourse.
That’s why we’re hiring more people, updating our policies, and evolving our product.
Read more below:https://t.co/dpix9Gihjo
— Safety (@Safety) August 29, 2023
Further, the information operations senior specialists X is hiring will “support investigative and response efforts across a wide range of critical issues, including … election interference,” according to the job posting.
Musk, who owns X, and CEO Linda Yaccarino have both advocated for free speech on the platform.
Twitter censored a New York Post report regarding then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s laptop shortly before the 2020 election and well before Musk took over in October 2022. X’s censorship team before Musk’s takeover was predominantly left-wing, the Daily Caller reported.
Upon assuming control of the company, Musk has released batches of “Twitter Files,” internal company documents revealing censorship, including emails related to the decision by X to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.
X did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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