Elon Musk's Impact on Twitter's Ability to Combat Disinformation and Misleading Content

Editorial, CNBC Indonesia

Tech

Tuesday, 10/10/2023 10:15 WIB

Photo: Israel began launching air attacks on the Lebanese border, killing four Hezbollah members on Monday (9/10) local time. This attack occurred when Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group were again involved in fighting in the Gaza Strip since last weekend. (REUTERS/SALEH SALEM)

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Since the conflict between Hamas and Israel broke out last weekend, a lot of content related to this bloody incident has been circulating on social media.

On X (formerly Twitter) there are many video recordings showing kidnappings and military operations launched by both camps. However, not all content shows actual field facts.

As a result, fake content, aka hoaxes, makes this conflict even more complicated because it triggers hateful reactions from the public. One of them, according to CNBC International, there is a video showing the Israeli air force attacking Hamas in Gaza. The video went viral on X and was re-uploaded by many netizens.

Even though the X team has labeled it as ‘misleading content’, similar re-uploaded videos can still be found on Elon Musk’s platform, according to monitoring CNBC International.

It could be said that As a result, netizens have difficulty finding accurate information regarding updates on the Hamas and Israel conflict in Gaza.

This became a highlight, especially after NBC News reported that X cut the team responsible for eliminating disinformation and maintaining integrity ahead of the election.

Moments before Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, X also removed the news headline from the link embedded on the platform.

This makes it difficult for external links from credible media organizations to convey information to the general public on Twitter, quoted from CNBC InternationalTuesday (10/10/2023).

Before Elon Musk acquired Twitter, the company committed to employing a dedicated team to combat disinformation and misleading content on its platform.

However, when Elon Musk ‘came to power’ and changed Twitter to X, one of the things he did was cut the special team. Under Musk’s leadership, the priority is to minimize content censorship and open a space for free expression for all users.

According to analyst from the Network Contagion Research Institute, Alex Goldenberg, Twitter has long had difficulty fighting disinformation. In fact, before Musk took over.

According to his study, there is a lot of foreign language (non-English) content containing disinformation that often escapes the monitoring of the Twitter management team.

“I often find that disinformation and calls to violence in English are prioritized [untuk dihapus]but in Arabic it is often ignored,” said Goldenberg.

“Many videos and photos are recycled from old conflicts which are sometimes linked to newer conflicts,” he added.

Several propaganda videos made by Hamas were also widely circulated on X. Many social media immediately deleted them, including Twitter. However, many related accounts are still found and are difficult to delete quickly without a special team handling them.

“Elon Musk destroyed Twitter’s arguably best component so far, namely the ability to get relatively accurate and reliable data in real-time when a crisis occurs,” said Paul Bernal, Professor of IT Law at the University of East Anglia, England.

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