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For the first time since Elon Musk took over as CEO in October 2022, X (formerly Twitter) released a transparency report on Wednesday (Sep 25), which offers insight into the platform’s content moderation efforts for the first half of 2024.

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This 15-page Global Transparency Report is the first since December 2021 and shows how X has managed user content. Before Musk's takeover, Twitter published semi-annual reports on its moderation efforts through its Transparency Center, a practice that began in 2012. 

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The report reveals that from January to June 2024, X reported suspending nearly 5.3 million accounts, a significant increase compared to the 1.6 million accounts suspended during the same period in 2022. In addition, over 10.6 million posts were either taken down or flagged for breaking platform rules. About 5 million of these were flagged for breaching the “hateful conduct” policy.

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Posts containing violent content (2.2 million) and those related to abuse and harassment (2.6 million) also made up a large part of the content that was either labelled or removed. 

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X also reported 370,588 cases of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) during the first half of 2024, as required by law. The platform noted that it had suspended over 2 million accounts linked to child sexual abuse material (CSAM). 

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"Our policies and enforcement principles are grounded in human rights, and we have been taking an extensive and holistic approach towards freedom of expression by investing in developing a broader range of remediations, with a particular focus on education, rehabilitation, and deterrence," the report read. 

"These beliefs are the foundation of 'Freedom of Speech, not Freedom of Reach'— our enforcement philosophy, which means we restrict the reach of posts, only where appropriate, to make the content less discoverable as an alternative to removal," it added.

(With inputs from agencies)