x.com (formerly twitter.com)
X is a platform that has undergone massive policy and societal changes as it navigates the shakeup caused with Elon Musk’s takeover. Musk buying the social media giant completely shifted its primary goals, claiming to champion “free speech”, he’s created a new media environment ripe for political content and influencers to take center stage.
From what I see on X’s Rules and Policies surrounding Authenticity they crack down on misinformation by identifying and suspending Inauthentic accounts that use either unauthorized automation, fake personas, or impersonation of others. Misleading content seems to fall under fake personas but it seems they are aiming to treat disinformation primarily, and may be putting misinformation on the back burner. They are very focused on intentional uses of misleading behavior/content, which is commendable but it could leave the site susceptible to the spread of misinformation.
One of the defining features of the Musk era of Twitter is the Community Notes, a feature that allows and encourages users to counteract false information by contradicting the claim or fact checking it on the post itself. Initially, it received backlash online as users thought it wouldn’t do much to counteract the problem, but research from the University of Washington has shown that they actually do impact the engagement of posts when a Note one attached. A major caveat is that users seem to get overwhelmed during sudden spikes of misleading content, with the 2024 election being a prime example, they get outpaced by viral misinformation during those times.
I am an avid user of X, even before Musk’s takeover, and will be the first to admit I am still very skeptical of him and not very confident he’s actually worried about the situation. One thing I will admit is Community Notes has shown to be quite a success, with even other social media companies following their example. I was even more impressed with their decision to make Community Notes a chat bot that notifies you when a post you interacted with has been hit with a Note. The reason I remain skeptical is because even though he claims X will be “politically neutral” he has been accused of personally targeting politically left-leaning accounts on the platform at the request of far-right influencers. Influencers would accuse accounts of violent rhetoric, with no evidence, and suddenly those same accounts end up suspended with no explanation. To me this indicates a potential targeting of left leaning content that could lead to the far-right being unmonitored, even though research shows they are more prone to share misinformation.
One of the good things that came out of the Musk era is the Community Notes. Of course it still has issues, but it has shown how users are very capable of helping the experts at fending off misinformation. I believe expanding Community Notes as a full on department at X headquarters with experts leading it would further improve the feature as they could provide critical insight into the features weaknesses.
Discord policy around misinformation is actually a little less broad than X, and they focus on different things altogether. Their Misinformation Policy Explainer shows that they focus on Health Misinformation and content aimed to cause Civic Disruption. It seems they are more focused on targeting conspiracists who may hide within the platform. This makes sense as Discord has become a hotspot for extremists to engage with their peers of similar communities. It’s also become a major hub for misinformation revolving the medical field, with efforts being found of some Discord users engaging in a coordinated misinformation campaign aiming at reducing applications to medical residency programs.
Discord has also taken a similar stance on misleading content, instead focusing on intentional deceit aimed at creating harm. However, this was a major change of stance for Discord at the time. On February 25th, 2022 it was announced that they were updating their community policies to ban misinformation that may cause major risk of physical or social harm. But this is about it when it comes to Discord policy on misinformation.
For what they have to offer, I do believe their main focus on health and civic chaos is a good start. It seems to directly target conspiracy, specifically the 2020 election fraud hoax and COVID-19 vaccine claims, as messaging apps have become central to the recruitment into their webs. They seem to be aware of how they contribute to the problem specifically, but they run into the problem of encrypted chats. Lots of messaging apps now offer encrypted messaging, hiding a lot of information from censorship.
What Discord could potentially look into is adding incentives for users to report misinformation. Research shows that changing the incentive to report misinformation did affect the users willingness to do so. I do know that they offer a subscription to give additional benefits in the app, they could offer some limited access to features for credible reports of misinformation. There could be other ways of course, but the main point is they have options for how to further combat the problem.
Reflection
Overall it seems that companies have reported success in their attempts to curb misinformation when they include their users, and of potential success when they change the incentives for their algorithms. I see that for all the commotion after social media companies rolled back policies around hate speech, they have still continued their attempts at curbing misinformation. Community Notes was born out of a need for reduced censorship by private companies and the government. People want to be informed, but they’ve been lied to by their major institutions. Often they turn to their community. Cooperation with users may be a major step forward in this battle against misinformation, but with a healthy mix of higher authority intervention
