Elon Musk's X has released its first transparency report since rebranding from Twitter, detailing all reported rule violations, content removal requests, and other enforcement actions taken during the first half of this year.

With X's updated content moderation approach, many have been analyzing the data to assess how Musk's more lenient stance has affected user experience. Interestingly, the total number of enforcement actions appears to be quite similar, at least according to the latest comparative updates from Twitter.

To begin, X has offered an overview of the total enforcement actions it implemented in response to detected rule violations from January to June 2024.

X reports that it suspended 5.2 million accounts in the first half of this year for rule violations and removed 10.7 million posts for the same reason. This marks an increase compared to Twitter's last transparency report, which covered the first half of 2022.

At that time, Twitter's team (before Elon Musk) enforced the removal of 6.6 million posts and took action against 5 million accounts, noting that only 1.6 million accounts were suspended for violations—a significantly lower number than X's recent actions.

In the first half of 2021, Twitter reported removing 5.9 million tweets and acting against 4.8 million accounts, with 1.2 million of those profiles suspended.

Overall, X is removing considerably more content and suspending more accounts, despite its newly relaxed moderation policies. This trend likely reflects a greater reliance on automation due to reduced staff, leading X to adopt a more binary view of violations. Accounts that previously might have received warnings to remove content are now being suspended more readily.

With that said, the number of accounts acted upon and suspensions are relatively close, with X removing nearly double the amount of content compared to Twitter's actions for violations. This outcome might not be what many anticipated.

However, the specifics align with broader concerns. According to X's data, users reported 81 million incidents of abuse and harassment and 66 million cases of hate speech during this period. Of those reports, only 1.35% of the abusive accounts were suspended, and a mere 0.004% of those posting hate speech were removed. Although millions of hate speech posts were taken down, X is now far less likely to suspend users for such offenses.

In 2022, 111,000 profiles were suspended for hateful conduct, compared to just 2,300 in this report.

In terms of increases, X suspended over 2 million more accounts for child safety than in 2022, as well as around 400,000 more "deceptive entities." However, it has been taking less action against suicide and self-harm content, with only 2,000 suspensions compared to 11,000 in 2022.

Regarding legal requests, X received 72,000 legal action requests in the first half of the year and complied with 70% of them.

In 2022, Twitter received 53,000 legal requests, down from 43,387 legal demands in 2021. Previously, the platform complied with approximately 54% of these requests.

Overall, despite Elon Musk's assertions of a more open and "free speech" oriented platform, X is actually removing more content, suspending more users, and responding to more legal requests than Twitter did. However, the current policies seem to allow users promoting hate speech to remain active, while enforcement against self-harm content appears to be less stringent.

This isn't particularly surprising. X has clearly indicated a shift toward relying more on reach restrictions rather than account suspensions and content removals. Elon Musk has also publicly opposed certain government orders while complying with others.

The data supports this trend, but it’s worth noting that X is still removing more content and suspending more accounts overall with this new approach.

Is this a better situation for the platform? Advertisers seem to think otherwise, and one could question whether this truly represents a more "free speech" friendly strategy compared to what previous Twitter management implemented. 

It appears that Twitter staff were less inclined to suspend accounts, which provided more opportunities for users to rectify their actions rather than face immediate bans.

Alternatively, it’s possible that X is simply attracting more posts that fall within its areas of focus for moderation.

Overall, this approach seems riskier, but it is intriguing to observe the differences in X's moderation strategy compared to its predecessor.