EU is formally investigating X over content about the Israel-Hamas war As a ‘very large platform’ under the EU’s new Digital Services Act, X is required to respond by next week and could face massive penalties. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/12...n-probe-dsa-digital-services-act-hamas-israel
Australia slaps Elon Musk’s X with a $600,000 fine Tess Bennett Technology reporter Oct 16, 2023 https://www.afr.com/technology/australia-slaps-elon-musk-s-x-with-a-600-000-fine-20231013-p5ec4s Australia’s online safety regulator is taking a tougher stance against global tech giants’ handling of child sexual exploitation material on their platforms, issuing Google with an official warning and fining Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) $610,500. The two infringement notices issued by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner relate to the companies’ failure to adequately respond to questions about how they detect, remove and prevent child sexual abuse material, grooming and extortion. eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she was disappointed with the responses from X and Google. Rhett Wyman In February, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, issued notices to Twitter (which later rebranded as X), Google, TikTok, Twitch and Discord giving the companies an initial 35 days to respond to her questions. After seven months of back and forth, the commissioner said X had failed to provide any response to some questions, leaving some sections entirely blank and providing incomplete or inaccurate responses to others. For example, the social media platform did not respond to questions about how long it takes to respond to reports of child sexual exploitation and the tools and technologies it uses to detect the material on its platform and live streams. “That’s quite problematic for a $44 billion platform that still reaches hundreds of millions of people when we’re talking about the most egregious illegal content of child sexual abuse materials,” Ms Inman Grant said. The company also failed to adequately answer eSafety’s questions relating to the number of safety and public policy staff still employed at X following the October 2022 acquisition and subsequent job cuts. X did not respond to a request for comment. Mr Musk took control of Twitter in November, initiating mass layoffs that wiped out the company’s 40-person Australian team and abandoned its local office. The global layoffs, which heavily affected the company’s content moderation and trust and safety teams, sparked concern about the social media platform’s ability to fight disinformation, hate speech, and child sexual abuse material. Ms Inman Grant, who worked at Twitter from 2014 to 2016, dealt with the single public policy employee in the region who is based in Singapore, X’s Australian lawyers, and the company’s trust and safety team in San Francisco. Last week, European commissioner Thierry Breton wrote to Elon Musk, warning that X was spreading illegal content and disinformation related to the Israel-Hamas war and called on him to take quick action...... X has 28 days to pay the $610,500 penalty, which is the first issued by the eSafety Commissioner, or request the infringement notice is withdrawn. If Twitter chooses not to pay the infringement notice, the Commissioner can take the matter to court, which has the power to penalise a platform up to $780,000 for each day they are out of compliance.
Elon Musk Is Shitposting His Way Through the Israel-Hamas War X’s Trust and Safety team says it’s working to remove false information related to the Israel-Hamas war. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is sharing conspiracies and chatting with QAnon promoters. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-israel-hamas-war-disinformation-x/
Elon Musk’s X hits a tipping point, with widespread condemnation of misinformation about Hamas’ attack on Israel flooding the platform Journalists, experts, and users of X blast Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino’s policies as making the platform worse than useless https://www.mediamatters.org/twitte...ondemnation-misinformation-about-hamas-attack
Let's see what Musk's view is on the role of women in society... Elon Musk’s Feud With Grimes Is a Warning The billionaire is now funding academic research—and revealing his interests in a future where women exist to have lots of babies. https://slate.com/technology/2023/10/elon-musk-grimes-babies-pronatalism-research.html
It's like Musk wants to run Twitter 2.0 into the ground as quickly as possible. Charging $1 per year to join X/Twitter will merely ensure that very few new actual users join Twitter. Musk claims the fee will reduce bots and spam -- this is laughable. The reality is that bot owners and spammers will simply use stolen credit cards to sign up and then Twitter will be losing large amounts of money on credit card charge backs. X, formerly known as Twitter, will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet and retweet https://fortune.com/2023/10/17/twitter-x-charging-new-users-1-dollar-year-to-tweet/