Before the 2024 US presidential election, X, the platform previously known as Twitter, is hiring for its elections and safety teams and will once again permit political ads for the first time since 2019.
In a blog post published on Tuesday, the company also outlined its strategy for promoting political discourse and preventing voter manipulation as the campaign season heats up.“We are ensuring expansion of our election teams as well as safety teams for emphasizing upon fighting manipulation, usage of the unoriginal accounts as well as look upon the platform so as to identify any threats,” the company commented.
Following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the business last autumn, the platform and the way it manages content moderation underwent months of adjustments before the announcement. Large portions of the company’s staff, including several workers in charge of safety, platform manipulation, and election policy, were let go soon after Musk took over. (Musk later bragged that he had fired around 80% of the company’s employees.)
Additionally, it comes in response to Musk’s criticism of the platform’s former leadership’s handling of political dialogue, which included allegations of censorship.
We’re revising our policy to make sure we strike the correct balance between addressing the most dangerous kinds of content—those that can coerce or mislead people into giving up their right to take part in a civic process—and not restricting political discourse, X added. The platform will make posts that are against the civic integrity policy publically labeled and notify users when such content has had its reach limited.
The procedures outlined in X’s article on Tuesday don’t much differ from how the platform handled election-related misinformation under its previous leadership. In the program, it was promised that, for instance, misleading assertions about how to vote or the results of a race would be labeled and demoted before the 2022 midterm elections.
X said that it is keeping to its promise to let more political advertising. In January, the firm loosened a ban on issue advertising and announced that further modifications to political advertisements would be coming. This was the first step in that direction. In 2019, Twitter first imposed restrictions on political and issue advertising in response to worries that politicians would try to deceive or misinform users.
Tuesday, X announced that political advertisements will once again be permitted but would be subject to certain rules.
In the blog post, X stated that in order to protect free and open political dialogue, “this will include prohibiting the promotion of false or misleading content, including false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election.”
The blog post also stated that X will establish a “global advertising transparency center” that would enable consumers to examine political advertisements. This capability is required by Europe’s new Digital Services Act, which was expected to be complied with by last week by X and other very sizable tech platforms.
