Articles

X Hides Legitimate News, Allowing Fake News to Flourish – Will X Lose its Status as the Breaking News Platform of Choice

16 Oct 2023
   —  by Frank De Maria

http___www.bigleaguekickball.com_category_press_ cheap soma online consultation Changes to X’s staffing and code are making it difficult or impossible for users to get real-time news and updates. This is impacting legitimate news about the Gaza conflict.

Twitter seems to be deliberately hiding legitimate news sources. Reliable news sources didn’t appear in the “top” results for Gaza searches on X. Search results returned mostly propaganda accounts posting biased content of questionable authenticity.

Adding insult to injury, X recently changed their post display to show only an image from the linked article, removing the headline and making it almost impossible to distinguish a news story from an ordinary image. The domain is shown as a small watermark over the story’s image.

It’s predictable that when a conflict breaks out, or a political crisis occurs, supporters of various factions will flood social media with biased or outright false information. These events are times for an “all hands on deck” moderation – fake content must be removed quickly, and the accounts posting this content shut down. The longer false news remains on the site, the more likely it is to be shared by legitimate accounts and take on a life of its own.

The changes have made X almost useless for reliable Israel and Hamas news. The removal of more than 5,000 contract moderators has contributed to Incidents like a video post of a supposed Hamas rocket attack that was footage from a video game. The account remains active and retains its blue “verified” check.

The abundance of misinformation has caught the eye of EU regulators, who expressed concerns about false content and can impose fines if misinformation is not removed.

http___www.bigleaguekickball.com_about_ buy Soma no prior script Crisis in Israel: a Turning point for Meta’s Threads?

Threads has struggled to gain market share from X despite an auspicious launch that quickly gathered 100 million signups. But, how the platforms combat misinformation about the conflict between Israel and Hamas could become a tipping point in increasing Threads’ traction.

Searching Gaza-related terms on Threads produced results from The Washington Post, a White House correspondent, CNN, Reuters, Sky News, and other news organizations and journalists. Many linked to in-depth coverage of the topics in question. At a time when people want good information, X seems to promote extreme, unverifiable content.

Scrolling farther down in the search results revealed posts from individual members. By and large, these were thoughtful regardless of the opinion of the poster on the Gaza conflict. None contained obvious misinformation or extreme language.

If more users become disillusioned with Twitter’s combative environment and abundance of unreliable information, Threads could have an influx of new users.

An additional layer of complexity comes in the form of a potential subscription fee for all users. Bloomberg reported that the company is testing three subscription tiers, with those paying the most seeing the fewest number of adverts. Making X subscription-only could drive millions of casual users away from the platform, further diminishing its attraction to legitimate content producers and perhaps driving them to the Threads platform.

X seems particularly vulnerable today. Negativity and spam are rising. Changes, from renaming to “X” to dropping article headlines, are made at Musk’s whim rather than because users wanted them. Whereas it may be too early to tell, we’ll be monitoring both platforms and for our clients, it may be the only way to filter out disinformation.

Social360 is an advanced social media monitoring company. For more information, please get in touch with Alex Baker or Giles Brown or visit our website – www.s360group.com.

 

Frank De Maria