US Senators Accuse X of Profiting From Terrorist Propaganda

The challenges keep coming for X, with a gaggle of greater than two dozen House Democrats within the U.S. issuing a letter that accuses the platform of “profiting off violent content by a terrorist organization”, in relation to the Israel-Hamas war.

The accusations primarily relate to X’s “X Premium” subscription program, which the senators claim has seen X absorb money from terrorist groups, who need to spread their propaganda and messaging within the app.

As per the letter:

“Researchers reported that not less than 20 out of 45 accounts it found to have posted terrorist propaganda were X Premium accounts, meaning that they’re paying for verification with none formalized vetting process and being promoted by the web site’s algorithm.”

The Senators also claim that X “has financially benefited from the spread of demonstrably false and misleading content” within the app:

“The media watchdog, NewsGuard, recently published evaluation of the 250 most-engaged posts – likes, reposts, replies, and bookmarks – throughout the first week of the conflict that promoted not less than one in every of ten distinguished false or unsubstantiated narratives referring to the war. Their evaluation revealed that 186 out of those 250 posts (74 percent) were posted by accounts verified by X – accounts that X directly profits from. Their evaluation also found that posts advancing these myths collectively received 1,349,979 engagements and were cumulatively viewed greater than 100 million times globally in only one week.”

The letter also highlights X’s creator ad revenue share program as one other vector for concern, because it enables users to receives a commission for his or her posts, and any claims in them, within the app.

The senators allege that this has created an inadvertent incentive for people to post more divisive, harmful content, including terror-related material and misinformation, in an effort to maximize engagement, and thus, ensure greater revenue intake.

The Senators have further raised “grave concern” about X’s “ongoing failure to abide by its own policies” referring to the promotion of misinformation and hateful, violent, and terroristic propaganda videos.

“This follows a troubling pattern of increased antisemitism on the platform since Mr. Musk’s purchase. A March 2023 study by CASM Technology and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) documented a near-doubling of the entire variety of anti-Semitic tweets in his first three months of ownership. In September, in response to this dramatic increase of antisemitism on X, Israel’s Prime Minister personally urged Mr. Musk to tackle antisemitism on the platform. Now, in the times following Hamas’ horrific October seventh terrorist attack on Israel, we’ve seen an inexcusable situation grow to be outright indefensible.”

The Senators have called on X to offer explanations as to how its working to handle these concerns, and what measures it’s implementing to enhance its systems on each front.

The accusations, that are co-signed by 27 Democrat representatives, are set to further underline the political division across the app, and comes only a day after Texas’ Republican Attorney-General Ken Paxton opened his own investigation into Media Matters over it potentially fabricating evidence in its recent reports, which showed that X is displaying ads alongside racist and anti-Semitic content.

X owner Elon Musk, meanwhile, is using such accusations to embolden his push for “free speech”, accusing those that make such claims of working for a pro-censorship agenda, because the broader powers that be look to shut down X for difficult mainstream narratives.

Which is a vague, and unproven accusation, and really, more of a rallying cry for Musk’s supporters than it’s an actual, realistic defense. But regardless, that’s what Musk goes with, as he and his team look to challenge such claims in court, despite all available evidence suggesting that X has no real technique to demonstrably counter such evidence.

Indeed, Musk’s ward off against the most recent accusations that X is showing ads alongside harmful content has prompted a spread of users to search out their very own examples of such within the app, which has seen many in a position to replicate the ad placement that Media Matters displayed.

It seems likely, then, that the accusations on this latest letter shall be provable, which can cause more challenges for X, which is already facing an advertiser boycott over the most recent accusations, together with Musk’s own controversial comments.

Elon, nevertheless, seems confident that he can fight back. But the actual challenge for X shall be in how long it takes for such a legal challenge to undergo, and what impact that has on its ad business within the meantime.  

X was already staring down a big loss for the yr before these latest challenges, after seeing a greater than 50% decline in ad revenue following Musk’s takeover on the app. The lack of more ad dollars will only worsen its financial state, though Musk, after all, has other resources that he could tap into to maintain the corporate afloat. However the challenges will proceed to grow, unless X can get its ad business back on the right track.

Meanwhile, Threads, Meta’s X competitor app continues to grow, with U.S. President Joe Biden yesterday joining the app, which, again, will further underline political division between the 2 alternatives.

Which could push X more into conservative social app territory, which hasn’t been fruitful ground, from a financial perspective, for Parler, Gab, Truth Social, etc.

But that does increasingly appear to be where X is headed, as a consequence of Elon’s insistence on sharing his thoughts and opinions on every divisive topic, and his resolution to fight back, quite than searching for to handle potential problems.

And it does seem, based on a growing variety of third-party investigations, that there are flaws to handle in X’s systems.

On this sense, it’s less of an assault on free speech, and more of a push to scale back instances of harmful, terror-related content, but Elon also seems to have made his stand. Which could possibly be an enormous problem for his “all the things app” vision.