A problem on X, previously Twitter, labeled many messages as “sensitive media” over the weekend, hindering the company’s efforts to attract advertisers. The X Safety account said that the issue has been resolved and the team is removing labels from affected posts.
X calls violence and nudity “sensitive media.” X advises users who often upload such content to label their photographs in media settings. X images and videos on iOS, Android, and the web can also get a one-time sensitive content notice. Nudity, violence, and “sensitive” posts can be tagged with a blurred content notice that needs a click or touch to view.
However, X users were finding that even harmless photographs and media were being categorized as “sensitive”—something the firm may do if it evaluates reported things and labels media to safeguard users. Twitter’s trust and safety team used technology and human assessment to make decisions before Elon Musk bought the firm.
Musk speculated that a spam bot caused this latest incident, contradicting the X Safety statement.
Musk stated Sunday, “An X spam/scam bot accidentally flagged many legitimate accounts today. This is being fixed.” He uploaded the X safety team’s bug message an hour later. Later Sunday night, Safety reported that “all impacted posts have been fixed and incorrectly applied labels removed.”
As X tries to find out a new revenue plan after Musk drove advertisers away, the issue is its latest mistake. At an event in November, X owner Elon Musk ordered marketers to “go f*ck yourself” over prominent businesses halting advertising on X over antisemitic material. As it prepares to launch AI and peer-to-peer payments in 2024, the company is courting small-to-medium advertising.
X’s personnel reductions may have harmed its trust and safety team, which evaluated accounts for spam and sensitive information.
In recent months, X has had spam difficulties beyond bots reporting accounts. Recent X searches for “I’m sorry, I cannot provide a response as it goes against OpenAI’s use case policy” found several automated accounts were masquerading as ordinary users and were paying X Premium members. Musk assumed a little cost would eliminate spam on the network, but this showed that some machines were prepared to pay to seem human. X also stated this summer that it had a verified spammer problem when it unveiled new DM options that would shift verified user messages out of your inbox, another sign that its verification system wasn’t working.
A problem that disrupted native photos and connections in August 2023 and a global outage last month were other notable faults for X after Musk’s leadership.
