6 ms·

Given its extremely liberal content moderation policy, how is X a propaganda machine?

vrganj 18d ago
Here's a pretty in-depth investigation into the workings of X as far-right propaganda machine: https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boosting-the-british-right-13464445 https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boo... > right-wing content was shown most prominently, regardless of users' political leaning. > Left-wing users saw almost the same amount of left-wing and right-wing content, even though they only followed left-wing accounts. But only 14% of the political content sent to our right-leaning users was left-wing. > The neutral users saw twice as much right-wing content as left-wing content. And barely any of the political content shown to our X users was non-partisan. > Over half of the political content shown to our new X users came from accounts categorised as extreme. Of the content from extreme authors, 72% of posts came from right-leaning accounts.
- frumplestlatz 18d ago
  So journalists ran a study with extremely poor sampling, base rate, and classification methodology designed by left-wing researchers and activists groups (including groups explicitly opposed to X), found the conclusions they wanted to find, and spent the second half of their article decrying the lack of heavy-handed moderation that pre-Musk Twitter used to control speech. All we can actually derive from that article is that X’s new user recommendation system exposed a small number of near-default, low-feedback, synthetic accounts to more content that left-wing “misinformation” researchers classified as “right-wing”.
  - monocasa 18d ago
    Musk also uses plenty of heavy handed moderation; it's just almost all directed at the left. For instance: https://crimethinc.com/2022/11/25/elon-musk-bans-crimethinc-from-twitter-on-request-from-far-right-troll https://crimethinc.com/2022/11/25/elon-musk-bans-crimethinc-...
    - frumplestlatz 18d ago
      They were banned for literally advocating for political violence. The fact that they hadn’t been banned earlier is the only concerning fact here. The current top article on their website argues for punching their political opponents in the streets.
      - monocasa 18d ago
        And yet right wingers openly calling for the west to ethnically cleanse the non white races get reinstated. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-twitter-reinstates-neo-nazi-andrew-anglin-account-1234640390/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-mus... And simply criticizing Musk is enough to get a shadow ban https://futurism.com/twitter-shadow-ban-elon-musk https://futurism.com/twitter-shadow-ban-elon-musk
        frumplestlatz 18d ago
        Andrew Anglin, the subject of the first article, was re-banned in 2023 for the same reason that crimethink, inc was banned. The subjects of the second article are particularly odious right-wing conspiracy theorists and racists that lost their reach, which they believe was connected to arguing with Elon. That seems like an action you’d be in favor of, and also it counters the propaganda claim — but regardless, their claim that they were shadow-banned, that the cause was direct intercession by Elon, and that the motivation was their merely disagreeing with him, is unsupported by any evidence.
        monocasa 18d ago
        He had already been banned for the same reason, and Musk unbanned him in the same wave that had him ban crimethinc.
      - mitxela 16d ago
        That's what a lot of the right was banned for pre-Musk, but you thought that was bad, so isn't it also bad when it's done to the left, or is your definition of bad one-sided?
  - vrganj 18d ago
    I'm not sure where you got any of that from. Where are you reading anything about the researchers working for Sky News, a Comcast subsidiary (!) being "left wing"? What are you basing your criticism of sampling and classification on? I provided a study that literally won the Royal Statistical Societies' "Statistical Excellence in Journalism" award [0]. You provided unfounded dismissal and conspiracy. The burden of proof is on your side. [0] https://rss.org.uk/news-publication/news-publications/2026/general-news/statistical-excellence-in-journalism-awards-2026-w/ https://rss.org.uk/news-publication/news-publications/2026/g...
    - frumplestlatz 18d ago
      [dead]
  - TheAceOfHearts 18d ago
    Researchers use whatever tools are available, you cannot complaint about imperfect methodology when Elon refuses to provide researchers access to their APIs in order to do a better job at assessing the state of the system. But for whatever it's worth I had made a new account around the same time and my experience was very similar to what was reported.
    - frumplestlatz 18d ago
      [flagged]
      - vrganj 17d ago
        Again, Comcast is not an "activist group" and the study literally got awarded by the Royal Statistical Society. As a cherry on top, they do owe researchers in the EU (though this was done in the UK, I know Sky has an EU presence as well) API access or similar under Article 40 of the DSA.
        frumplestlatz 17d ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700433 https://www.allsides.com/news-source/sky-news-media-bias https://www.allsides.com/news-source/sky-news-media-bias You’re just being brazenly disingenuous at this point. The publication is left-leaning, regardless of the distant parent company. The experts they used to design and run the study were literally left-wing political advocacy groups, and a self-declared left-wing disinformation researcher. The award is an empty appeal to authority. But none of those facts matter as much as their obvious selection, base rate, and classification methodology failures.
        defrost 17d ago
        Ever so slightly left leaning by your source. Centralist and unbiased by another: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/sky-news/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/sky-news/ That's quite the achievement for a group that was once firmly a propaganda wing of the global Murdoch PoV. "brazenly disingenuous" in such context is a ridiculous and emotive over statement.
- mahboi 18d ago
  Before X flagged me as a bot for no reason, I had a mostly unused account and can confirm it was showing me a ton of right-wing content. Also lots of stuff related to Elon Musk in particular. On the flip side, X has less moderation, and it's pretty even-handed. They're allowing a lot of pretty mild right-wing content that Twitter was banning people for.
  - mitxela 17d ago
    They didn't release the ranking algorithm as open source, but they released enough of a pretense that people got some hints, and we know that whether a post is by Elon Musk is one of the most important ranking factors.
nickthegreek 18d ago
algo is what can make or break a propaganda machine.
laimewhisps 18d ago
X is extremely aggressive in banning anti-Zionists, both left and right wing. It has some of the most anti-free speech policies on the internet.

Here's a pretty in-depth investigation into the workings of X as far-right propaganda machine: https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boosting-the-british-right-13464445 https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boo... > right-wing content was shown most prominently, regardless of users' political leaning. > Left-wing users saw almost the same amount of left-wing and right-wing content, even though they only followed left-wing accounts. But only 14% of the political content sent to our right-leaning users was left-wing. > The neutral users saw twice as much right-wing content as left-wing content. And barely any of the political content shown to our X users was non-partisan. > Over half of the political content shown to our new X users came from accounts categorised as extreme. Of the content from extreme authors, 72% of posts came from right-leaning accounts.

frumplestlatz 18d ago
So journalists ran a study with extremely poor sampling, base rate, and classification methodology designed by left-wing researchers and activists groups (including groups explicitly opposed to X), found the conclusions they wanted to find, and spent the second half of their article decrying the lack of heavy-handed moderation that pre-Musk Twitter used to control speech. All we can actually derive from that article is that X’s new user recommendation system exposed a small number of near-default, low-feedback, synthetic accounts to more content that left-wing “misinformation” researchers classified as “right-wing”.
- monocasa 18d ago
  Musk also uses plenty of heavy handed moderation; it's just almost all directed at the left. For instance: https://crimethinc.com/2022/11/25/elon-musk-bans-crimethinc-from-twitter-on-request-from-far-right-troll https://crimethinc.com/2022/11/25/elon-musk-bans-crimethinc-...
  - frumplestlatz 18d ago
    They were banned for literally advocating for political violence. The fact that they hadn’t been banned earlier is the only concerning fact here. The current top article on their website argues for punching their political opponents in the streets.
    - monocasa 18d ago
      And yet right wingers openly calling for the west to ethnically cleanse the non white races get reinstated. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-twitter-reinstates-neo-nazi-andrew-anglin-account-1234640390/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-mus... And simply criticizing Musk is enough to get a shadow ban https://futurism.com/twitter-shadow-ban-elon-musk https://futurism.com/twitter-shadow-ban-elon-musk
      - frumplestlatz 18d ago
        Andrew Anglin, the subject of the first article, was re-banned in 2023 for the same reason that crimethink, inc was banned. The subjects of the second article are particularly odious right-wing conspiracy theorists and racists that lost their reach, which they believe was connected to arguing with Elon. That seems like an action you’d be in favor of, and also it counters the propaganda claim — but regardless, their claim that they were shadow-banned, that the cause was direct intercession by Elon, and that the motivation was their merely disagreeing with him, is unsupported by any evidence.
        monocasa 18d ago
        He had already been banned for the same reason, and Musk unbanned him in the same wave that had him ban crimethinc.
    - mitxela 16d ago
      That's what a lot of the right was banned for pre-Musk, but you thought that was bad, so isn't it also bad when it's done to the left, or is your definition of bad one-sided?
- vrganj 18d ago
  I'm not sure where you got any of that from. Where are you reading anything about the researchers working for Sky News, a Comcast subsidiary (!) being "left wing"? What are you basing your criticism of sampling and classification on? I provided a study that literally won the Royal Statistical Societies' "Statistical Excellence in Journalism" award [0]. You provided unfounded dismissal and conspiracy. The burden of proof is on your side. [0] https://rss.org.uk/news-publication/news-publications/2026/general-news/statistical-excellence-in-journalism-awards-2026-w/ https://rss.org.uk/news-publication/news-publications/2026/g...
  - frumplestlatz 18d ago
    [dead]
- TheAceOfHearts 18d ago
  Researchers use whatever tools are available, you cannot complaint about imperfect methodology when Elon refuses to provide researchers access to their APIs in order to do a better job at assessing the state of the system. But for whatever it's worth I had made a new account around the same time and my experience was very similar to what was reported.
  - frumplestlatz 18d ago
    [flagged]
    - vrganj 17d ago
      Again, Comcast is not an "activist group" and the study literally got awarded by the Royal Statistical Society. As a cherry on top, they do owe researchers in the EU (though this was done in the UK, I know Sky has an EU presence as well) API access or similar under Article 40 of the DSA.
      - frumplestlatz 17d ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700433 https://www.allsides.com/news-source/sky-news-media-bias https://www.allsides.com/news-source/sky-news-media-bias You’re just being brazenly disingenuous at this point. The publication is left-leaning, regardless of the distant parent company. The experts they used to design and run the study were literally left-wing political advocacy groups, and a self-declared left-wing disinformation researcher. The award is an empty appeal to authority. But none of those facts matter as much as their obvious selection, base rate, and classification methodology failures.
        defrost 17d ago
        Ever so slightly left leaning by your source. Centralist and unbiased by another: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/sky-news/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/sky-news/ That's quite the achievement for a group that was once firmly a propaganda wing of the global Murdoch PoV. "brazenly disingenuous" in such context is a ridiculous and emotive over statement.
mahboi 18d ago
Before X flagged me as a bot for no reason, I had a mostly unused account and can confirm it was showing me a ton of right-wing content. Also lots of stuff related to Elon Musk in particular. On the flip side, X has less moderation, and it's pretty even-handed. They're allowing a lot of pretty mild right-wing content that Twitter was banning people for.
- mitxela 17d ago
  They didn't release the ranking algorithm as open source, but they released enough of a pretense that people got some hints, and we know that whether a post is by Elon Musk is one of the most important ranking factors.

nickthegreek 18d ago

algo is what can make or break a propaganda machine.

laimewhisps 18d ago

X is extremely aggressive in banning anti-Zionists, both left and right wing. It has some of the most anti-free speech policies on the internet.