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Musk's X disabled feature for reporting electoral misinformation, researcher says

www.reuters.com Musk's X disabled feature for reporting electoral misinformation - researcher

Elon Musk's X, formerly called Twitter, disabled a feature that let users report misinformation about elections, a research organisation said on Wednesday, throwing fresh concern about false claims spreading just before major U.S. and Australian votes.

Musk's X disabled feature for reporting electoral misinformation - researcher

After introducing a feature in 2022 for users to report a post they considered misleading about politics, X in the past week removed the "politics" category from its drop-down menu in every jurisdiction but the European Union, said the researcher Reset.Tech Australia.

It comes less than three weeks before Australia holds a referendum, its first in a quarter century, on whether to change the constitution to establish an Indigenous advisory body to parliament and 14 months before a U.S. presidential election.

"It would be helpful to understand why X have seemingly gone backwards on their commitments to mitigating the kind of serious misinformation that has translated into real political instability in the US, especially on the eve of the 'bumper year' of elections globally," said Alice Dawkins, executive director of Reset.Tech Australia.

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