Elon Musk's company, X, formerly known as Twitter, has been criticised for the problem of misinformation prevalent in the platform. In addition, hatred in the service social media has grown during Musk's leadership.
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However, the situation in X has been particularly aggravated by the attack of Hamas in Israel on 7 October and Israel's response with bombing in Gaza. The misinformation from verified users who pay $8 a month to be prioritized by the algorithm has gotten out of hand.
And according to a new study published just Tuesday by the Center Against Digital Hate (CCDH), X doesn't seem to be very responsive to content that may be dangerous or harmful when reported.
CCDH researchers collected 200 publications containing hate against Muslims or Jews. For example, some of these publications contained anti-Semitic or Islamophobic images, a negative reference to the Holocaust, a glorifying reference to the Nazis or depersonalisation of the Palestinians. CCDH then reported these publications to Company X and gave it one week to respond. The company removed only four posts; 196 of these posts, namely 98%, remain on the platform.
“X has sought to convince advertisers and the public that it has control over hate - but our research shows that these are just empty words", said the Imran Ahmed, the CEO and founder of CCDH.
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In the past, Musk has had confrontations with the CCDH, even going so far as to sue the agency for his reports. However, the CCDH has not backed down and continues to publish studies on the platform and its failures in content surveillance.
X has shared a number of changes to its Community Notes program, the "fact-checking" solution that allows members to add reference frames to other users' posts. However, there has been verified spread of misinformation, regardless of these Actions of the company. However, the programme is not intended to address misinformation.
"This is an inevitable result when you reduce security and surveillance staff", said Ahmed. "Musk has created a safe space for racists and has sought to make a virtue out of the impunity that leads them to attack, harass and threaten marginalized communities.“
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The study suggests that Twitter can address the problem of hate speech related to the Israel-Gaza conflict by enhancing its algorithms for Detection and the removal of this content. This can be done by developing more effective detection mechanisms and training algorithms to identify hate and remove it from the platform.
In addition, the study suggests increasing the number of human checks to assess content and enforcing stricter rules to remove hate content. This could include hiring additional employees to evaluate reports and sanctioning users who break the rules.
In addition, the study points to the need for greater transparency on the part of Twitter. The company should provide detailed reports on how it deals with hate content and Actions that it takes to deal with it. This will help to inform users and increase trust in the platform.
Finally, the study proposes active cooperation with organisations and experts in the field of intolerance and propaganda in order to develop joint initiatives to combat intolerant speech on the Twitter platform.
Source: mashable
