Elon Musk’s X misinformation report feature

The tool which was available in the US, Australia and south Korea since 2021 was expanded to other countries in 2022. 

This comes in less than 3 weeks as Australia is set to hold referendum. 

Removing a way for people to report suspected political misinformation may limit intervention at a time when social media platforms are under pressure to curtail falsehoods about electoral integrity, which have grown rapidly in recent years. 

In a letter to X’s managing director for Australia, Angus Keene, Reset.Tech Australia said the change may leave content that violates X’s own policy banning electoral misinformation online without an appropriate review process. 

Musk has said X’s “Community Notes” feature, which allows users to comment on posts to flag false or misleading content, is a better way of fact checking. But those notes are only made public when they are rated as helpful by a range of contributors with varying points of view, according to X’s website. 

The move could also affect voters’ ability to report misinformation ahead of the 2024 US presidential elections. 

Users can still report posts that they consider to be hateful, abusive or spam. 

The European Commission study examined over 6,000 unique social media posts across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, and YouTube. 

The platform with the largest “ratio of discoverability” of disinformation – meaning the proportion of sensitive content made up of disinformation – was X. YouTube had the lowest, the study suggested.