How Twitter/X became a haven for fake news and misinformation

Earlier this year, Elon Musk made one of his more subtle changes to Twitter/X. For nearly 15 years, it had included a message in its tweet composer that used the prompt: “What’s happening?” Then, this summer, it lost its contraction and gained an exclamation mark. “What is happening?!”

The frenzied and confused tone is perfect for our times and for today’s Twitter/X. So is the hint that the question has moved from being genuine to rhetorical. Once, the joke about Twitter/X was that people answered that question by describing their breakfast; today, if the question is answered at all, it is likely to be as an expression of confusion, ignorance or anger.

“What is happening?!” Well, one thing is for sure, Twitter/X is certainly not an especially good place to find out. And it has been getting worse.

This week, as Israel and Gaza were swept by violence, Twitter/X should have been some help in piecing together what was happening. Historically, it has thrived in such moments – providing a mix of on-the-ground reports, verifiable media and informed analysis by experts.

But over the years – even before Musk took over – those have been lost. That reportage has been mixed in with misleading reports; analysis has been swapped for opinion.

The problem has become so rife that Musk has today faced censure from the European Union. There are indications Twitter/X is hosting “fake and manipulated images and facts ... such as repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games”, wrote commissioner Thierry Breton.

Mr Breton suggested that Twitter/X’s content rules were unclear, that it was not taking down problematic content even when it had been flagged by relevant authorities, and that it did not have sufficient measures to stop the spread of disinformation. The European Union’s powers under the new Digital Markets Act mean that he has the power even to shut off Twitter/X across the continent if he is not satisfied with Musk’s response.

In his response on Twitter/X, Musk said: “Our policy is that everything is open and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports. Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that the public can see them.”

At its best, the immediacy and directness of Twitter/X used to be very helpful – and provided another window into what was happening alongside traditional newspapers and broadcasters. Other platforms such as those made by Meta are functionally useless for breaking news. And Twitter/X’s rivals are still too small and shaky to provide much benefit.

But Twitter/X can, however, no longer fulfil the function that people need it to. Attempting to follow the latest on Israel and Gaza has shown how far it has fallen. The question is why has this happened?

Some of this is the direct result of changes that Musk has made in the year or so since he took over the site, in part the result of vendettas that have had vast unintended consequences.

Many of his moves have been actively hostile to authoritative reporting: annoyed by media outlets for a variety of reasons, he has taken steps to flatten any privilege they enjoyed on the site. That means that a false post from someone with no skin in the game is now as likely to be amplified as a true one from someone on the ground, for instance.

His dislike of limits on free speech has undermined the work on content moderation more generally, reducing the efficiency of the systems that are supposed to take down false and disturbing content. Earlier this year, for instance, an EU study criticised the “the dismantling of Twitter’s safety standards” and found that they had led to an amplification of Russian disinformation. (Musk’s Twitter/X has proven less interested in working with researchers on this kind of study, making good numbers on the spread of false information harder to find.)

It all means that the chances of opening up Twitter/X with a view to finding out something about the conflict and finding instead that you are accidentally watching a war crime that may not even have anything to do with current events is worryingly high.

Users are presented with a barrage of information with little to discriminate between what is genuine and what isn’t. Twitter/X has removed all of the scaffolding that surrounds that documentation – the context that checks for facts and the warnings that you may be confronted with distressing content.

One of the other issues that Twitter/X has created itself is a little less obvious. Twitter/X’s focus on the “for you” page is not in itself a bad thing: in theory, it means that you are given the most relevant tweets, regardless of whether you follow someone. In essence, the “for you” tab is a mirror, albeit a slightly cracked one, that reflects back what it thinks users are into.

The trouble is that people don't often like what they see. The most engaged and energetic opinion-havers on the site are shown other people with similarly vociferous opinions, and then feel obliged to respond to them, further ratcheting up a vicious spiral of more and more intense and insular commentary.

To these people, this clearly feels both urgent and important. But to everybody else, the tweets can look bizarre: people announcing that their “whole timeline” has adopted some niche stance and that they themselves will be taking an opposing but similarly unimportant view.

This might be a problem largely afflicting the kinds of people who spend too much time arguing online: something that is true of many of the most high-profile people in the world, but which is a largely minor interest.

But these people use the same internet and social networks as everyone else, and occasionally that becomes a problem more widely. In recent days, even if you wanted to wade through the misinformation and other problems with using Twitter/X for news, it has been difficult to see posts about what is actually going on – instead, you’ll be forced to look at posts arguing about other posts that long ago lost their connection with what is happening.

None of this is to say that Twitter/X is over, or in terminal decline. It has carried on thus far, through similar scandals and failures. We have no real way of even knowing whether user numbers have fallen, given Twitter/X now keeps those numbers secret. Even if the site is full of people saying that it has become unusable; something that suggests they’re sticking around to see whether they can use it.

The trouble is that the people who really leave don't make a noise as they do so. They quietly drift away, unnoticed. It was often those people – given to posting information, not arguments, and not focused on endlessly spiralling arguments about arguments – who gave Twitter/X much of its value. The question isn’t so much whether Twitter/X is or will be still around, but what kind of Twitter/X will persist and it doesn’t look encouraging.

A version of this article was published in the Indy/Tech newsletter. You can sign up here.