X strengthened moderation – the number of account blockings tripled

Social network X has published a detailed report on account blocking and removal of illegal content for the first half of 2024. Faced with the challenge of retaining advertisers concerned about toxicity on the platform, the report provides insight into how the social network moderates content and monitors safety.

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Statistics show that the number of blocks has more than tripled, with almost 5.3 million accounts blocked, up from 1.6 million in the first six months of 2022. According to Engadget, in addition to blocking, more than 10.6 million posts were deleted or marked with a special label for violating the rules. Almost half of them (4.9 million) were removed for violating the hate speech policy. Also, a significant number of deletions and labels affected posts containing insults and harassment (2.6 million), and violent content (2.2 million).

Image source: X/Engadget.com

Since Elon Musk purchased Twitter and published previous statistics, the amount of toxic content has increased significantly. For example, in the second half of 2021, the last time Twitter released data, it reported suspending about 1.3 million accounts for policy violations and flagging about 4.3 million posts. And while a new X report claims that rule-breaking content makes up less than 1% of all posts on the platform, the situation is now causing concern among many advertisers and advocacy groups.

Previously, in April last year, the platform published a brief report in the form of a 383-word blog, which contained some figures on content removal, but did not include data on post removals and other information important to advertisers.

The latest report turned out to be more informative. It said X received 18,737 requests from government agencies, with the majority coming from the EU, with a disclosure rate of 53%. X also received 72,703 requests from government agencies to remove content. At the same time, Japan became the leader in the number of such requests (46,648), followed by Türkiye (9,364). Elon Musk’s company claims to have complied with the prescribed actions in more than 70% of cases.