X has suspended three times as many accounts under the reign of Elon Musk than in previous years and has complied with more government requests to remove content.
Musk took over what was then known as Twitter in late 2022 with a pledge to make the platform of a bastion of free speech and to push back against government influence over social media.
But the first transparency report released under Musk’s reign, covering the first half of this year, paints a different picture.
Compared to the transparency report for the second half of 2021, before Musk bought the social media giant, X is now suspending far more accounts for a range of reasons, and complying with requests by governments from around the world for content to be removed and information on users.
Twitter previously released transparency reports twice a year outlining the company’s moderation actions and requests it has received from governments.
X has now released its first transparency report since Musk acquired the company, with more limited information.
The report also does not provide any specific information on Australia in contrast to previous iterations.
“Our policies and enforcement principles are grounded in human rights, and we have been taking an extensive and holistic approach towards freedom of expression by investing in developing a broader range of remediations, with a particular focus on education, rehabilitation and deterrence,” the report said.
The report reveals that 5.3 million X accounts were suspended in the first half of this year, on the back of 225 million user reports.
This is a steep increase in the number of account suspensions compared to the second half of 2021, when 1.3 million accounts were suspended.
In the first half of this year 10.7 million posts on X were either removed or labelled, compared with 5.1 million pieces of content which were removed in the same period in 2021.
Just over 1 million accounts were suspended for abuse, harassment and hateful content, and 2.2 million posts were deleted for these reasons.
Government requests
The transparency report also reveals the number of government requests X received in the first half of the year and what actions the company took in response to these.
When taking over X, Musk railed against the previous leadership’s compliance with government requests and the influence of these on moderation.
But Musk’s X is more compliant with government requests than Twitter was in 2021.
In the first half of 2024 X received nearly 19,000 requests for information from governments around the world, and opted to disclose this information in nearly 10,000 of these cases, with a 53 per cent compliance rate.
In the second half of 2021, Twitter received 11,500 requests for information from governments and complied with 40 per cent of these cases.
The majority of these requests came from the European Union, which made 7,800, followed by the US, then Japan and United Kingdom.
X also received nearly 73,000 requests from governments for posts to be removed, and actioned 70 per cent of these cases, with more than 51,000 posts removed.
The majority of these cases came from Japan’s government, which made 46,000 requests.
The new X transparency report does not reveal how many requests the Australian government made.
Musk recently labelled Australia “fascists” over proposed new misinformation laws, and was embroiled in legal action with the eSafety Commissioner over its push for videos of a Sydney church stabbing to be removed from the platform.
It was revealed earlier this year that X had reinstated more than 6,100 accounts that had been previously banned in Australia, with 220 of these suspended for hateful conduct violations.
At the same time, X had been rapidly offloading employees responsible for safety and global trust.
