There were already fears in advance: would the mass layoffs by new Twitter boss Musk mean that the network would allow more false information? Experts are already seeing clues about misleading posts.
After the takeover by Tesla founder Elon Musk, the US short message service Twitter has been criticized for not taking appropriate action against misinformation in the US midterm elections. Republican candidates Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kari Lake’s Twitter posts should have contained warnings under company policy, the US non-governmental organization Common Cause said on Tuesday.
Greene and Lake’s posts received tens of thousands of likes and retweets on Twitter. Republicans on social media on Tuesday blamed Democrats for reported election glitches in some locations.
Common Cause, which advocates transparency in politics, also noted a significant slowdown in Twitter’s response time since Friday after employees responsible for posting credible information were fired. “Twitter is hopeless and only responds like they are investigating and then goes unresponsive for days,” the group said. The company’s response time was previously typically between one and three hours.
Twitter did not initially respond to requests for comment. Tuesday’s election is a test for Twitter and other social media, which have struggled for years to balance free speech and the dissemination of potentially harmful comments.
Ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, both Musk and Twitter’s head of security and integrity, Yoel Roth, announced that the company would maintain and enforce its election integrity policies. Musk himself had called for the election of Republican candidates on Twitter.
