Today, X published the company’s first transparency report since Elon Musk purchased the company, formerly Twitter, in 2022.
Prior to Musk’s acquisition, Twitter published transparency reports every six months. These largely covered the same ground as the new X report, providing specific numbers for takedowns, government requests for information, and content removals, as well as data on what content was reported and, in some cases, removed for violating policies. Twitter’s last available transparency report covered the second half of 2021 and was 50 pages long. (X’s is shorter, at 15 pages, but government requests also appear elsewhere on the company’s website and have been constantly updated to comply with various government orders.)
Comparing the 2021 report to X’s current transparency report is a little difficult, as the way the company measures different things has changed. For example, in 2021, 11.6 million accounts were reported. Of those 11.6 million, 4.3 million were “actioned” and 1.3 million were suspended. According to X’s new report, there were over 224 million reports, both of accounts and individual pieces of content, but the result was 5.2 million suspended accounts.
While some numbers appear to be consistent across reports (unsurprisingly, abuse and harassment reports are high), in other areas there’s a stark difference. For example, in the 2021 report, accounts reported for hate content accounted for nearly half of all reports, and action was taken on 1 million of the 4.3 million accounts (reporting used to be interactive on the website; the current PDF no longer allows users to skim through the data for more granular breakdowns). In the new X report, the company says it has taken action on just 2,361 accounts for posting hate content.
But this may be due to the fact that X’s policies have changed since it was Twitter, which Theodora Skeadas, a former member of Twitter’s public policy team who helped create its Moderation Research Consortium, says could change how the numbers look in a transparency report. For example, last year the company changed its policies on hate speech, which previously gender errors and dead names covered upand Removed its rules on Covid-19 misinformation in November 2022.
“As certain policies have changed, some content is no longer infringing. Therefore, if you look at changes in quality of experience, it can be difficult to reflect them in a transparency report,” he says.
X also has lost users Since Musk took over, which further complicates the new reality of the platform. “If you take into account the change in usage, is that a smaller number?” he asks.
After taking over the company in October 2022, Musk laid off most of the company’s trust and safety staff, as well as its policy staff — the people who set the platform’s rules and ensure they’re enforced. Under Musk, the company also began charging for its API, making it harder for researchers and nonprofits to access X data to see what was actually happening on the platform. This may also explain the changes between the two reports.