Elon Musk's X Removes General Option to Report Misleading Info About Politics

upstart writes:

Elon Musk's X removes general option to report misleading info about politics:

X (formerly Twitter) appears to have removed an option that allowed users in a handful of markets to directly report misleading information about politics.

An Australian digital research group called Reset.Australia spotted the change and posted an open letter (via the Guardian), addressed to X's country manager, in which it writes:

A recent change to your reporting process appears to have left Australian users unable to report electoral misinformation. This is because the categories for reporting in Australia offer no option to report electoral misinformation. Users are offered inappropriate categories such as hate speech, abuse, spam, imitation etc. Previously Australian users could select 'It's misleading' about 'Politics' category. This may leave violative content subject to an inappropriate review process and not labelled or removed in compliance with your policies.

The group warns X that the change could breach Australia's misinformation code - which it notes requires signatories to enable users to "report content or behaviours to Signatories that violate their policies... through publicly available and accessible reporting tools".

"X's Civic Integrity Policy makes clear that electoral misinformation is against your policies (see appendix 2). Users should be able to report this content appropriately," it adds. The letter also points out the timing of the change comes ahead of a major vote - dubbing it "extremely concerning that Australians would lose the ability to report serious misinformation weeks away from a major referendum".

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