Elon Musk’s X must be banned

Regulators need to stop cowering before the richest man in the world

Let’s be honest with ourselves: if a broadcaster or newspaper had started publishing thousands of non-consensual, sexually explicit images of women or — even worse — of children, politicians and regulators would be out for blood. It would be a front-page, ongoing scandal and the organization responsible would be quickly brought to heel because it would be so outrageous.

But when Elon Musk and his chatbot Grok do it, there’s somehow little more than crickets. Politicians are alarmed and say something needs to be done, but can’t quite say what that something is. Regulators say they’re investigating, as thousands more women and children are victimized while the richest man in the world continues treating the whole situation like a big game — or simulation.

Since Musk took over Twitter and mutated it into X back in 2022, the platform has taken a hard turn to the right, blasting conspiratorial and right-wing opinions into its users feed and encouraging the kind of vile discourses Musk seems to delight in consuming and engaging with. It has restored far-right accounts and sought to explicitly shape the narratives on issues to align with Musk’s increasingly extreme political positions.

There has been reason to take action against X for a long time. But if spinning up a chatbot that enables the creation of child pornography and for any user to undress any woman on the platform at their whim isn’t enough to finally ban it, what will ever force regulators and political leaders to take action?  (more...)

Elon Musk’s X must be banned