Elon Musk’s X accused of bias after pro-Harris accounts labelled as ‘spam’

Prominent X accounts advocating for Vice President Kamala Harris have been labelled as spam or restricted in recent weeks, triggering alarm among some Democrats that Elon Musk’s social media platform is tilted in favour of his chosen candidate, former president Donald Trump.

Only a handful of pro-Harris accounts, including one called “White Dudes for Harris,” appear to have been affected. But the recurring issues are raising questions about whether Musk’s platform is intentionally censoring the pages, or if the deep staff cuts he made after buying the company in 2022 have left the platform ill-equipped for the surge in political speech ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

Musk’s recent posts on X — which have actively courted support for Trump and amplified a manipulated video of Harris — highlight the potential risks of having the owner of a major platform openly champion a presidential candidate. This dynamic is unprecedented, as other social media CEOs and founders have largely stayed out of the political fray.

“It’s curious,” Ross Morales Rocketto, an organiser of “White Dudes for Harris, a pro-Harris group whose account was affected twice in the course of a week. “Clearly we’re political, so it just continues to feel like another iteration of Musk’s Twitter impacting people’s political speech when it does not align with him.”

White Dudes for Harris drew more than 200,000 people to an online fundraiser last week that raised more than $4 million. Shortly after the event, the group had its X account suspended. It was reinstated several hours later. On Tuesday, the group was told by X that its reach on the platform could be restricted because the group’s page “may contain spam or be engaging in other types of platform manipulation,” according to a screenshot shared by organizers.

Another account, Progressives for Harris, was temporarily suspended and labelled as spam on Friday shortly after the group announced that prominent politicians such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would headline an upcoming online rally.

And at least one official campaign account has also apparently been restricted on X. On the day Biden withdrew from the race last month and endorsed Harris, some users reported they were unable to follow her official campaign account, @KamalaHQ.

Musk and X did not respond to a request for comment.

“We’re talking about four episodes out of a lot of Harris content on X,” said Daniel Kreiss, a principal researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina. “But without transparency into why enforcement decisions are being made, given the very strong political activism of the owner, people are going to raise questions.”

After Musk acquired the platform then known as Twitter in October 2022, he made sweeping layoffs and other dramatic changes to its staffing and policies. The entrepreneur fired much of Twitter’s trust and safety team, loosened the site’s rules on hate speech, reinstated a number of previously suspended accounts and lifted a ban on campaign ads.

Alexander B. Howard, an open government advocate, said X’s diminished staff might make technical glitches or moderation mistakes more likely, or cause the platform to fix them more slowly. Such issues happened even before the billionaire took over, he said, but Musk’s political advocacy has erased any trust in the platform’s neutrality and put a spotlight on which accounts get restricted.

“Neutrality has left the building,” Howard said. “We’re now in a really dangerous moment headed to a pivotal presidential election, and someone who has direct control, at a root level, to this platform is fomenting division.”

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and other social media CEOs and founders have at times engaged with political causes with donations or the occasional statement. With the exception of Trump’s social media site Truth Social, none have been as outspoken or partisan as Musk, who has increasingly courted a right-wing audience on his platform.

Last spring, for example, Musk hosted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on X to announce his run for the White House, in an event that was marred by major technical issues. This summer, Musk became even more overt in his support for the Republican ticket when he endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign after the attempted assassination of the former president.

This week, Musk used his site to taunt British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over far-right violence in the United Kingdom, suggesting the perpetrators were unfairly targeted by police. The Financial Times reported that the British government had found X less responsive than other social platforms to alerts flagging posts believed to be inciting further violence or spreading disinformation about the clashes.

On Tuesday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he would do a “major interview” with Musk on Monday, without providing further details. Musk appeared to confirm in a post on X that the interview would be streamed on his platform. A representative for the Harris campaign declined to comment about whether the candidate was offered a similar opportunity.

Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter was often accused by Republicans of censoring conservative viewpoints with the aim of helping Democratic candidates. Its new owner’s personal endorsement of Trump - coupled with the recent restrictions experienced by pro-Harris accounts - has flipped that pattern on its head.

Last month, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) called on House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to investigate reports that some users were temporarily blocked from following a Harris campaign account on July 21. In a media statement about the letter to NBC News, Nadler wrote that unlike “the countless conspiracy theories of political censorship that Republicans have chased down over the last year,” the episode “appears to be a real example of online censorship.” Spokespeople for Jordan did not return a request for comment.

Soon after that letter, other pro-Harris accounts began to report a string of actions against them by X. It started with the “White Dudes for Harris” account, which was first suspended last week right after its massive fundraiser because of “a user report” for “violating our rules against evading suspension,” according to screenshot of the log-in screen shared with The Washington Post. The account was reinstated several hours later.

On Friday, an account for “Progressives for Harris,” @Progs4Harris, was suspended shortly after it posted to announce that Sanders would headline its own online rally Monday, along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). The account — which received a significant jump in followers after it posted about the suspension — was reinstated after about two hours, according to an email the group received from X and shared with The Post, which said the suspension was accidental.

“We have systems that find and remove multiple automated spam accounts in bulk, and yours was flagged as spam by mistake,” the email said.

On Tuesday, “White Dudes for Harris” received another notification from X saying the reach of its account may be limited and its content may also be temporarily restricted because it may contain spam. Even if the string of incidents can be attributed to mistakes by X, Rocketto, the organizer, said it makes him wonder about what will happen as the political speech ramps up in the coming months.

“How are they going to handle this, especially as we get closer and more misinformation spreads?” Rocketto said.

Musk has at times jumped in to help accounts experiencing technical problems on X. On Saturday, for example, the National Weather Service posted that it could no longer post automated tweets and, as a result, it could no longer “post all watches/warnings/advisories as they are issued.”

Musk responded: “This should not be happening. Will investigate.”

Organisers of the pro-Harris accounts say they have not received any direct assistance from X staff or its CEO, only automated messages informing them their accounts have been restricted or reinstated.

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Cristiano Lima-Strong contributed to this report.

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