X Has Become More Compliant With Government Requests Since It Was Bought By Elon Musk

Despite X owner Elon Musk’s extensive history as a steadfast free speech defender, his social media platform is agreeing to the government’s requests for heightened security measures to prevent or remove user content.

Although he had previously slammed X’s ownership for bending to political pressures, since he took over the platform with the declaration that he would defy government efforts to censor, reports show that since Musk took over, the platform has been far more amenable to such political pressure.

Additionally, it has been shown that X became more flexible to government requests for access to  users’ personal data in the last few years, directly after Musk took ownership of the company.

The first half of this year, X abided by 71% of legal requests to remove content. This number has jumped up 20% since a figure of 50% was reported in 2021, and it has more than doubled since prior years; in 2020, the rate was at 30%.

The statistics were released by X in a global transparency report, which Musk had previously described as “key” to user trust. However, this has not inspired the intended user trust, as Musk seemingly shut down access to tools that provided researchers and public access to more company information, which included the global reports themselves. The reports kept track of the number of times hateful or illegal content was posted and flagged, as well as the time and degree in which X responded to the complaints.

Removal demands have come from a variety of countries such as Turkey, Japan and South Korea, all three of which have submitted over 1,000 requests.

Formerly known as Twitter, X has released such transparency reports since the year 2012, but stopped in 2022 under Musk’s ownership.

Musk recently got into a public row with the Brazilian Supreme Court after they ordered X be blocked in the country last month and he refused to agree to their demands. However, the company ended up agreeing to move toward complying with the demands.

Musk was in the news recently when he offered “to give” Taylor Swift, a baby.