X (formerly Twitter) has made changes to its policy on newsworthy posts to allow more content that would normally violate its rules to remain on the platform. The company made the modifications amid the conflict in and around the West Bank.
Until now, the company only granted a newsworthy exception to accounts that had at least 100,000 followers. X has removed that threshold, since TechCrunch reports. The latest version of the policy stipulates that “high-profile” accounts are eligible for a newsworthiness exception. The account in question must also represent “a current or potential member of a local, state, national or supranational governmental or legislative body.” Historically, only elected officials and government figures have been eligible for the exemption.
The X security account noted that there has been an increase in daily active users in the region in recent days and that users have posted more than 50 million times about the conflict. The platform which focused on “protecting the conversation about X” as the situation develops.
In recent days, we have seen an increase in daily active users on @X in the conflict zone, there have also been more than 50 million posts worldwide focused on the weekend terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas.
As events continue to unfold rapidly, a cross company…
— Security (@Segurity) October 10, 2023
“Over the weekend, we updated our Public interest policy”the company said. “We know that sometimes it is incredibly difficult to watch certain content, especially during times like this. In these situations, X believes that, although it is difficult, the public is interested in understanding what is happening in real time.”
X also said it had removed “newly created Hamas-affiliated accounts” and is working with partners to reduce the spread of “terrorist content.” However, the change in newsworthiness policy could allow more misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict (and other issues) to remain on X, when it previously would have been removed.
The company appears to be taking a more hands-off approach to misinformation in general under owner Elon Musk. It relies more on Community Notes for contextual information about posts that may be false or misleading.
According , X removed a tool in recent months that helped address coordinated misinformation campaigns by detecting when multiple accounts shared the same potentially manipulated or mislabeled media. It is said that the company took this measure to reduce costs.
X pointed out several false and misleading posts about the conflict, including some with a video claiming to show Israeli airstrikes against Hamas. However, a review by discovered that the platform’s systems did not detect many other posts with the same video and title. The recently closed X tool may have helped in that regard.
