Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) just revealed its plans to add labels to parody accounts to increase transparency and ensure that “users aren’t deceived.”
A post from X’s safety account reveals that profile labels will be used to “clearly distinguish” parody accounts and their content on X.
“We designed these labels to increase transparency and to ensure that users are not deceived into thinking such accounts belong to the entity being parodied,” the post said.
The post continues by saying that these labels will be attached to both posts and accounts on the platform to “clearly demonstrate the source of the content you’re seeing.”
“These accounts, like all accounts on X, must still adhere to the X rules, particularly our authenticity policy,” the post concludes.
X users responded positively to this statement, with many saying things like “this is great to hear” and “Thank you, long overdue.”
One user commented, “Now do something about all the fake Elon Musk accounts.” Maybe this shift is an attempt to combat the creation of more illegitimate accounts impersonating Musk.
He might even be looking out for his mother, Maye Musk, who has had fake X accounts created in her name.
However, this may be Musk’s not-so-subtle attack on satire after the billionaire tech mogul filed a legal document that claimed that The Onion was not allowed to bid on Alex Jones’ X account InfoWars due to its terms of service agreements.
The Onion was planning to make the InfoWars X account, which has roughly 648,000 followers, into a satirical and or parody account.
Yet, the bid was eventually called off, as the judge overseeing the bid claimed that Jones’ InfoWars empire, Free Speech Systems, was worth more than The Onion's initial bid.
This post came just days after Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, announced that it was ending its fact-checking program and replacing it with a system similar to X’s Community Notes.
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