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

nickthegreek 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

algo is what can make or break a propaganda machine.

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-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.

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frumplestlatz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

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”.

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monocasa 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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-...

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frumplestlatz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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monocasa 2 hours ago | parent [-]

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-mus...

And simply criticizing Musk is enough to get a shadow ban

https://futurism.com/twitter-shadow-ban-elon-musk

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frumplestlatz an hour ago | parent [-]

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 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		He had already been banned for the same reason, and Musk unbanned him in the same wave that had him ban crimethinc.

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vrganj 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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/g...

	▲	frumplestlatz 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
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