Social network X is guilty of political abuse
concludes an investigation published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, while the british newspaper The Guardian and spanish The Vanguard They announced that they will leave the platform, owned by billionaire Elon Musk.
A team of researchers from the University of London and the Alan Turing Institute concluded: political abuse is a key feature of political communication
in X and whether you are on the left or the right, it is just as common to see politically committed users abusing their political opponents to a similar degree and with little room for moderates
highlighted the work disseminated by the Argentine media Page/12.
The contribution, which included data from 2022 and nine countries, indicated how those users who deviate from the norms of their party
they are quickly pigeonholed as political enemies
. According to the publication, 375 million messages were used for the analysis during a 24-hour period, and they were linked to a sample of 1,800 politicians who have an active account observed users who retweeted to politicians, and thus they estimated their ideological inclination. In this way they managed to measure the toxicity
of content to indicate online abuse.
Misinform and create disturbing content
Since the owner of Tesla and Starlink bought Twitter in 2022, fired the technical staff in charge of the area that technology companies call content moderation, who were in charge of avoiding or mitigating, not always successfully, the circulation of illegal messages, such as violence and harassment, hate speech, misinformation that puts people at risk. the lives of third parties
indicated the researcher of the Conicet (National Council of Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina), Martín Becerra, in statements to Page/12.
Recently, The Guardian announced that it was abandoning platform disturbing content
and the spread of far-right conspiracy theories and racism, so he warned his readers that we will no longer publish to any official editorial account on the X network site
.
Regarding the US presidential election campaign, the British media outlet expressed on its website that It only underlined what we have long considered: X is a toxic media platform and its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use his influence to shape political discourse
. Meanwhile, The Vanguard argued that X became a network of disinformation
and that makes messages that violate human rights go viral.
He also remembered mass dismissal of workers
and the consequent suppression of the department that moderated the content. The big advertisers that had the platform abandoned it a long time ago
he added.
For its part, the European Commission explained last week that it will continue activa
on the social network due to lack of measures against the risk of disinformation
indicated the Europa Press news agency.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘
fbq(‘init’, ‘133913093805922’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Contact’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Donate’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘FindLocation’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Search’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Subscribe’, {value: ‘0.00’, currency: ‘MXN’, predicted_ltv: ‘0.00’});
fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’);
#Political #abuse #proliferates #Musk #bought
–
Questions for Guest 1:
1. As a researcher, what led you to investigate the prevalence of political abuse on social media platform X?
2. What were some of the surprising findings from your study regarding political abuse on X, and how does it differ from other social media platforms?
3. How did you measure the “toxicity” of content on X, and what did your findings indicate about the role of political affiliation in online abuse?
4. In your opinion, what led to the recent decision by British newspaper The Guardian and Spanish newspaper The Vanguard to exit the platform?
5. Do you think political abuse on X is specific to the current ownership under Elon Musk, or is it inherent in the platform’s design?
Questions for Guest 2:
1. As a journalist, what are some of the challenges you faced in covering the recent decision by The Guardian and The Vanguard to exit X, and how did this affect your approach to reporting on the story?
2. How did the mass layoffs of content moderation staff impact the editorial team’s decision to leave X, and what alternatives are being considered for fact-checking and moderating content on the platform?
3. In your experience, what role has X played in shaping political discourse ahead of the upcoming US presidential election, and what consequences do you foresee for its role in the future?
4. Do you think governments and regulatory bodies have a responsibility to address the proliferation of political abuse on social media platforms like X? If so, what specific actions could they take?
5. Looking back at previous studies on X’s impact on democracy and free speech, how do you think the latest developments will affect public perception and usage of the platform moving forward?
