Three French researchers specialized in the study of fake news, Tristan Mendès France, Julien Pain e Rudy Reichstadtthey launched an appeal through the newspaper Le Monde for one strike against the social platform better known as Twitterto challenge the spread of misinformation fromarrival of Elon Musk. No tweets all day, protesting.
X (Twitter), strike to contest fake news under Elon Musk
The date chosen for the strike, the October 27marks the anniversary of the entry of Elon Musk as the owner of Twitter, a moment that researchers believe coincided with an increase in the spread of toxic content.
As Wired explains, researchers think that the removal of account certification has exacerbated the problem of fake news. The introduction of Twitter Blue’s branding, a paid service now known as X Premium, has made it more difficult to distinguish reliable sources of information.
This new policy has allowed anyone willing to shell out a monthly figure of around 7-8 dollars to obtain greater visibility, undermining trustworthiness and public prominence as criteria for account verification.
Furthermore, this policy allowed the amplification of fake news related to global conflicts such as the one between Israel and Gaza (so much so that the EU has opened an investigation into the matter). Musk even removed the verification check from the New York Times accountsomething that could have been avoided during two conflicts such as those in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.
This strike aims to highlight the problems related to the growing misinformation on the platform and to demand a change in verification and moderation policy. Which since Musk fired many moderators and readmitted several accounts previously banned for misinformation, seems to no longer be effective.