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Conservatives on Edge After X's Latest Announcement

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  August 30, 2023 2:30 PM

Republicans had high hopes with Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition. Gone would be the days of shadow-banning, getting thrown in Twitter jail for telling the truth, and having speech labeled with ridiculous warnings. Musk, after all, was a self-described “free speech absolutist” and understood its importance to a "functioning democracy." When he spent $44 billion buying the social media giant, he described Twitter—now X—as “the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”

It's with this in mind that conservatives were stunned to see an announcement about some changes taking place on the site ahead of the 2024 election.  

In a blog post titled, “Supporting people’s right to accurate and safe political discourse on X,” the company announced that it’s expanding its “safety and elections teams to focus on combating misinformation, surfacing inauthentic accounts and closely monitoring the platform for emerging threats.” 

Additionally, X said its Civic Integrity Policy will be employed temporarily before and during elections, and posts that “potentially” violate this policy will be given “publicly visible labels," plus have their reach restricted (just like on pre-Musk Twitter). 

X will also lift its ban on political advertising that was put in place back in 2019 when Jack Dorsey was still CEO. 

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Building on our commitment to free expression, we are also going to allow political advertising. Starting in the U.S., we’ll continue to apply specific policies to paid-for promoted political posts. This will include prohibiting the promotion of false or misleading content, including false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election, while seeking to preserve free and open political discourse. We’ll also provide a global advertising transparency center so that everyone can review political posts being promoted on X, in addition to robust screening processes to ensure only eligible groups and campaigns are able to advertise.  (X blog)

None of the announcements sat well with conservatives.