X CEO claims platform is ‘healthier and safer’ than last year

The CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter, said in a Thursday interview with CNBC the platform is “healthier and safer” than it was a year ago.

“By all objective metrics, X is a much healthier and safer platform than it was a year ago,” Linda Yaccarino said. “Since acquisitions, we have built brand safety and content moderation tools that have never existed before at this company.”

Yaccarino also referenced the company’s recently introduced “Freedom of Speech, not Freedom of Reach” policy. In an April post on the company’s blog about the policy, the company described it as “our enforcement philosophy which means, where appropriate, restricting the reach of Tweets that violate our policies by making the content less discoverable.” 

“So if you’re going to post something that’s illegal or against the law, you’re gone, zero tolerance,” Yaccarino said. “But more importantly, if you’re going to post something that is lawful, but it’s awful, you get labeled. You get labeled, you get deamplified, which means it cannot be shared. And it is certainly demonetized.”

After the platform’s acquisition by Elon Musk last year, he announced his plans for a platform that allowed for “free speech” and changed content moderation policy. However, he later said the platform could not become “a free-for-all hellscape.”

Reports of increased hate speech on the platform began to rise after Musk’s takeover in Oct. 2022. A little over a month later, 50 out of the top 100 advertisers halted their advertisements on the platform, according to left-leaning watchdog group Media Matters for America. 

Last month, X threatened legal action against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an organization that was tracking the spread of hate speech on the platform, over allegations of “misleading claims” about the social media site.

“This should be the last time anyone dares to claim Musk is a ‘free speech absolutist’ – he is in fact a bully who uses attack dogs to terrorize his opponents into silence,” CCDH executive officer Imran Ahmed said in a statement at the time.