Reuters: Exclusive: Twitter exec says moving fast on moderation, as harmful content surges. “Elon Musk’s Twitter is leaning heavily on automation to moderate content, doing away with certain manual reviews and favoring restrictions on distribution rather than removing certain speech outright, its new head of trust and safety told Reuters.”
TechCrunch: Elon Musk suspends Kanye West’s account for breaking Twitter rules. “Elon Musk has suspended Kanye West’s (aka Ye) Twitter account after the latter posted antisemitic tweets and violated the platform’s rules. In a reply to Mega founder Kim Dotcom, Musk clarified that Ye’s account was suspended for ‘incitement to violence’ and not because of the music artist posting an ‘unflattering’ picture of the Tesla CEO.”
CNN: China to punish internet users for ‘liking’ posts in crackdown after zero-Covid protests. “Internet users in China will soon be held liable for liking posts deemed illegal or harmful, sparking fears that the world’s second largest economy plans to control social media like never before.”
CNN: Twitter is no longer enforcing its Covid misinformation policy. “Twitter said it will no longer enforce its longstanding Covid misinformation policy, yet another sign of how Elon Musk plans to transform the social media company he bought a month ago.”
Washington Post: Twitter grapples with Chinese spam obscuring news of protests. “Twitter’s radically reduced anti-propaganda team grappled on Sunday with a flood of nuisance content in China that researchers said was aimed at reducing the flow of news about stunning widespread protests against coronavirus restrictions.”
The Guardian: Twitter failed to detect upload of Christchurch mosque terror attack videos. “Twitter has removed freshly uploaded footage of the Christchurch terror attack that was circulating on the platform, but only after the New Zealand government alerted the company, which had failed to recognise the content as harmful.”
CBS News: Twitter and other social media sites slipped on removing hate speech in 2022, EU review says. Please note this study is from the spring, before Elon Musk. “The EU report, carried out over six weeks in the spring, found Twitter assessed just over half of the notifications it received about illegal hate speech within 24 hours, down from 82% in 2021. In comparison, the amount of flagged material Facebook reviewed within 24 hours fell to 64%, Instagram slipped to 56.9% and YouTube dipped to 83.3%. TikTok came in at 92%, the only company to improve.”
The Register: Elon Musk to abused Twitter users: Your tormentors are coming back. “Twitter CEO Elon Musk has decided to allow suspended accounts back onto the micro-blogging service. Musk used the same process for this decision as he did when restoring access to a Florida Man who once held high elected office in the US – an utterly unscientific and easy to manipulate poll of Twitter users.”
Ars Technica: Crypto and NFTs aren’t welcome in Grand Theft Auto Online. “Cryptocurrencies and NFTs have been formally disallowed from Grand Theft Auto Online’s popular role-playing (RP) servers. That’s according to a new set of guidelines posted on Rockstar’s support site last Friday.”
TechCrunch: Musk’s impact on content moderation at Twitter faces early test in Germany. “A German law requiring social media platforms to promptly respond to reports of hate speech — and in some cases remove illegal speech within 24 hours of it being brought to their attention — looks like it will provide an early test for whether Elon Musk-owned Twitter will face meaningful legal consequences over how recklessly he’s operating the company.”
The Guardian: Twitter fails to delete 99% of racist tweets aimed at footballers in run-up to World Cup. “New research shows the platform failed to act on 99 out of 100 racist tweets reported to it in the week before the World Cup…. Of those, 11 used the N-word to describe footballers, 25 used monkey or banana emojis directed at players, 13 called for players to be deported, and 25 attacked players by telling them to ‘go back to’ other countries. Thirteen tweets targeted footballers over their English skills.”
South China Morning Post: China to step up internet censorship with stricter rules for social media and streaming sites. “Chinese social media and web video platforms must approve all news-related comments before they go online and step up training for censors to keep out ‘harmful’ content, according to new regulations taking effect on December 15.”
BBC: Astronomer in Twitter limbo over ‘intimate’ meteor. “An astronomer from Oxfordshire was locked out of her Twitter account for three months after sharing a video of a meteor which was flagged by the site’s automated moderation tools.”
NBC News: FBI, DHS, and social media firms like Meta, TikTok aren’t adequately addressing threat of domestic extremists, Senate report says. “An investigation by the Senate Homeland Security Committee alleges that the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and leading social media companies are not adequately addressing the growing threat of domestic terrorism, especially white supremacist and anti-government extremists.”
Mediaite: Twitter Flags Mediaite Post Critical of Elon Musk as ‘Potentially Spammy’. “Twitter deemed a Mediaite article that is critical of the company’s new owner Elon Musk as ‘potentially spammy’ on Friday night, and diverted users to a warning page when they click the post. The warning had been removed as of Saturday morning after multiple media outlets – including this one – reported on it.”
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