Elon Musk's Twitter took no action against problematic election posts flagged on Tuesday, watchdog says

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Elon Musk's Twitter took no action against problematic election posts flagged on Tuesday, watchdog says
A watchdog group has said Elon Musk's Twitter took little action against election posts they flagged, per Reuters.Alex Kantrowitz
  • A watchdog group has said Musk's Twitter took no action against election posts they flagged.
  • The group said tweets by some Republican politicians should have included a warning under Twitter's current policy.
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A watchdog group has said Elon Musk's Twitter took little action against high-profile election posts they flagged as problematic, Reuters reported.

Common Cause, a nonpartisan group that monitors social media for voter suppression, told Reuters that posts from some Republican candidates should have included warning labels under Twitter's current policy.

False claims and conspiracy theories have already been emerging around Maricopa County in Arizona, where voting machines experienced a "technical glitch" that led to some votes not being correctly tabulated, CNN reported. Some people took to social media to blame Democrats for the technical difficulties.

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Common Cause said tweets by candidates such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who also publicized the glitch on Twitter, should have been marked with a warning under Twitter's civic integrity policy, per Reuters.

The watchdog also told the news outlet that Twitter's response time had decreased since mass layoffs last Friday saw 50% of staff axed.

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The group said Twitter's response time used to be around one to three hours, but now the company was "hopeless" and "going dark on it for days."

There has been concern over how Musk's Twitter will approach content moderation. The self-proclaimed "free-speech absolutist" has already seen some advertisers turn away from the platform over fears of loosening content moderation.

Musk and Twitter's head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth have both said there were no changes made to Twitter's content moderation before the midterms. Along with a link to Twitter's current rules, Musk tweeted: "Twitter rules will evolve over time, but they're currently the following."

Twitter's communication team did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside normal working hours.

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