There’s been a trend happening over the past 12 months that I’ve been noticing in my work and it’s the deliberate move by public sector – corporate communications, leadership and even more generally staff – to LinkedIn.
They are quietly quitting X.
If I’m honest, in the past 12 months the number of requests for strategy or training on X has been pretty low. In discussions around social media strategy the frustration with X is the level of vitriol, disinformation and lack of moderation which public sector pros says is hampering effective social communications.
There is what I would describe as a ‘waning appetite’ because of continuing struggles around relevant reach, increased hate, attacks from bot and fake accounts and the removal of verification and analytics from basic accounts.
Furthermore, the lifeblood of social media – engagement – is almost becoming impossible on this social network.
Moderation teams in the European Headquarters Office in Dublin have been let go since Elon Musk took over in 2022.
The algorithm is increasingly political and just last week the European Commission opened proceedings against X under the new Digital Services Act (DSA). More specifically, areas linked to risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers are under investigation.
In particular the EU Commission casts an eye over X’s cunning verification policy. It said X’s so-called blue checks had misled users into thinking some content was trustworthy when it wasn’t necessarily.
It went on to say that X’s blue checks policy was deceiving and had been abused by malicious actors. The checks were initially created as a way to verify users like government officials, public figures and journalists, in efforts to limit misinformation, but Musk changed that policy, allowing users to buy blue check accounts.
X on X
“In our view @X doesn’t comply with the DSA in key transparency areas. It misleads users, fails to provide adequate ad repository and blocks access to data for researchers. It’s the first time we issue preliminary findings under the Digital Services Act.” Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission EU fit for Digital Age and Commissioner for Competition.
To which Elon Musk responded
“The DSA is misinformation.”
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