The Ongoing Effects of Musk’s X Acquisition
Following Melon Musk’s acquisition and rebranding of Twitter to ‘X’ in October of 2022, policies governing safety and conduct were changed or discarded, and the number of engineers tasked specifically with “trust and safety issues” was reduced from 279 at the time of Musk’s acquisition to 55 in May 2023.
Australia’s eSafety office issued a legal notice to X in June of 2023 under the Online Safety Act that compelled the company to provide information about how it was addressing online hate across its platform in the period 24 January 2022 to 31 May 2023 inclusive. In a report prepared by the eSafety Office based on the results of their inquiry, X disclosed that it had reinstated 6,103 Australian accounts that had previously been banned from the platform. 194 of these accounts had been initially suspended/banned for hateful conduct violations. Our CEO Dr Andre Oboler raised this issue directly with the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion during his second testimony:
Since his acquisition, Mr Musk has advanced a claim that X is a platform for ‘free speech’, and it is in accordance with this logic that accounts previously suspended for hateful conduct have been reinstated. This position has attracted critique, including during the aforementioned Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, where it was argued that X’s policies represented a “double standard”. Namely, the rationale invoked by X to justify its protection of potentially harmful content, a purported desire to create an environment that permits unfettered free speech, is contradicted by the platform’s concomitant failure to enforce the standards of behaviour necessary for any such environment to emerge.
Although some figures who were reinstated under Mr Musk, such as the neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, have subsequently been banned again, an array of individuals known for promoting hate with considerable reach and influence have had their accounts restored and remain on the platform at the time of writing. The following are a small sample of prominent social media personalities that were exiled from Twitter but were, in effect, exonerated by and welcomed back to X.
Andrew Tate: Misogyny
The notorious misogynist Andrew Tate was banned from Twitter in 2017 shortly after he asserted that women “bear some responsibility” for being victims of rape. Tate’s account was reactivated on or around 18 November 2022. Mr Tate resumed making regular misogynistic proclamations almost immediately. Amongst a wide range of harmful generalisations and stereotypes, Mr Tate’s rhetoric also involves the dehumanisation of women. Mr Tate espouses a view of gendered power dynamics in which women exist in a fundamentally and inalienably parasitical relationship with men. According to Mr Tate, women compensate for various physical, cognitive and psychosocial impairments by engaging in exploitative relationships with men that are based on exchanges of sexual gratification and reproduction for power and wealth [see below].
In addition to being offensive, Mr Tate’s production and distribution of misogynistic content has visibly contributed to the normalisation of misogyny as well as an increase in the frequency of specifically misogynistic instances of anti-social behaviour. Moreover, Mr Tate’s posts routinely violate X’s rules and policies. Of particular note is the manner in which Mr Tate’s comments about women on X violate the subcategory of ‘dehumanization’ as it is articulated within X’s Hateful Conduct policy [see below].
Mr Tate’s remarks about women consistently invoke (albeit more or less directly) his stated belief that women are essentially and categorically interchangeable with female reproductive functions. Such remarks are demeaning and degrading, but they also necessarily involve the denial of agency, and in so doing, they are inescapably dehumanising.
At the time of writing, Mr Tate has 10.8 million followers on X.
Laura Loomer: Islamophobia
Laura Loomer, a self-proclaimed Islamophobe and white-nationalist, was banned from Twitter in 2018 following her Islamophobic abuse of a United States congresswoman. On 8 December 2022, Loomer’s account was reinstated on X. Most recently, Ms Loomer’s anti-Iranian rhetoric has attracted the attention of the Iranian regime, who have begun posting AI-generated videos depicting Loomer as a Lego Minifigure.
As recently as March 2026, Ms Loomer made a post on X with a video taken by a passenger aboard a flight from Nashville to Florida that was diverted to Atlanta following reports by passengers of a bomb threat [see below]. In her post on X, Ms Loomer asserts that an “Arabic looking Muslim passenger onboard the plane threatened to blow the plane up with a bomb”. Ms Loomer claims that there was no media coverage of the incident, and declares that all Muslims should be deported from the United States of America. Although the flight was diverted and a SWAT team did indeed take a passenger into custody, this proved to be the result of xenophobic assumptions on the part of the passengers rather than a thwarted instance of Islamic extremism as it was portrayed by Ms Loomer.
X users contributed context via the community notes function to Ms Loomer’s post, explaining that the suspect was speaking a foreign language, and that he was in possession of some kind of countdown on his phone [see below]. It was later realised that this was simply a timer for Ramadan prayers.
Available information indicates that the individual never threatened anyone, and the bomb threat was introduced into the narrative as a result of xenophobic stereotypes. Although no charges were filed and the suspect was cleared by the state police as well as the FBI, Ms Loomer left the post on X unedited.
The post is demonstrative of Ms Loomer’s enduring commitment to inciting hostility towards Muslims, as well as a lack of concern for the threats presented by mis and disinformation. This type of content violates X’s current Hateful Conduct Policy, which includes a dedicated subsection for “Incitement” [see below].
At the time of writing, Ms Loomer has 1.9 million followers on X.
E. Michael Jones: Antisemitism
After being suspended from all mainstream social media platforms (including Twitter) in 2018 for his production and distribution of antisemitic propaganda, E. Michael Jones’ account was restored on 23 November 2022. One of the first public remarks made by Mr Jones following his reinstatement to X was an antisemitic ‘prayer’ for God to “break the yoke of Jewish tyranny…” [see below].
Mr Jones has maintained an antisemitic publication, Culture Wars, since 1996 (previously Fidelity, which he founded in 1981), and has espoused an exceptionally broad range of antisemitic tropes in his writing and public speaking appearances. Mr Jones’ antisemitic commentary is often couched in his ideas of Catholicism, both as a religion and an institution, against which he claims Judaism exists in hostile opposition. Below is a recent example of the type of content posted to X by Mr Jones, which in this case is in the form of Holocaust denial. Having previously held the view that the Holocaust was a “justified response to Jewish behaviour”, Mr Jones’ ideas have since evolved into Holocaust denial.
In the above example, Mr Jones’ antisemitism is reinforced by and enmeshed with his Holocaust denial via his conspiratorial claims of “Jewish privilege” and the “Holocaust narrative”. Mr Karp refers to a lampshade that was made from the skin of Buchenwald concentration camp prisoners. The lampshade was one of a number of artifacts made out of human remains at Buchenwald, and it has become symbolic of the extreme brutality faced by victims of the Holocaust. Forensic testing has conclusively proven that the lampshade is indeed made of human skin, but Holocaust-deniers like Mr Jones nevertheless advance various pseudo-academic claims about such artifacts in their efforts to challenge the veracity of Nazi genocide.
Posting material of this kind very clearly violates, at least, the following element of X’s current Abuse and Harassment policy that specifically prohibits Holocaust denial [see below].
At the time of writing, Mr Jones has 133,500 followers on X.
Dr Jordan Peterson: Amplification
Dr Jordan Peterson, in accordance with the hateful conduct policy of the time, was banned from Twitter in June 2022 after he posted transphobic abuse. On 18 November 2022, Mr Musk personally announced Dr Peterson’s X account would be reinstated. Leveraging the perceived weight of his academic credentials, Dr Peterson’s contributions to social media are shot through with climate-denial, transphobia, misogyny, and a peculiar brand of pseudu-intellectualism. Notably, Dr Peterson has continued to post transphobic remarks to X of a very similar kind to those for which he was previously banned. Instead of targeting and abusing individuals, Dr Peterson now regularly targets transgendered people more broadly [see below].
In the above example, Dr Peterson first denies the gender identity of trans women, but then proceeds to pathologise them as ‘autogynephilic’, and then condemns them as “men of the worst sort”. Dr Peterson’s remarks, in this instance, are directed at Admiral Rachel Levine, the first openly transgendered four-star commissioned officer in any of the United States uniformed services. Although these remarks meet the general criteria of ‘hateful conduct’ as well as ‘abuse and harassment’ as they are described in X’s policies, the subsection that appears to be intended to protect transgendered people from abuse offers no protections from Dr Peterson’s comments [see below].
Dr Peterson’s divisive, hateful and erroneous commentary presents a myriad of risks to the public sphere, and the way in which his relationship with Melon Musk has allowed him to bypass legitimate social sanctions is demonstrative of additional hazards. In the below screenshot of a post on X, Dr Peterson expresses his gratitude to Mr Musk for posting a portion of an interview in which Dr Peterson denies (among other things) the existence of patriarchy in Western societies. Notably, Mr Musk posted this video from his personal X account, and endorsed it as “true”, thus imparting artificial credibility, and dramatically increasing the public’s exposure, to Dr Peterson’s remarks. This interaction demonstrates that the reactivation of banned accounts on X can be leveraged by Mr Musk to manipulate public discourse on X and, potentially, to distort public opinion.
At the time of writing, Dr Peterson has 6.1 million X followers.
Concluding Remarks
The examples discussed here clearly demonstrate that a range of hateful behaviours that were considered unacceptable and prohibited by Twitter are tolerated by what has now become X. Moreover, X’s policies that prohibit hateful and abusive conduct are, at most, only selectively enforced, and they therefore do not represent a genuine framework for behavioural norms and expectations on X. Individuals, such as those examined here, have now had years to probe for a boundary, and they have found that, in practice, there are none. As a result, X is now an environment in which anti-social and harmful behaviour proliferates freely.
Recent events, such as the Royal Commission as well as other incidents involving regulatory bodies from around the world have demonstrated a clear willingness on the part of X to ignore and resist practically any attempt to influence the platform’s operations. As a privately owned entity, traditional mechanisms used for enforcing compliance with international standards, such as fines, do not have the same implications for X Corp as they previously did with Twitter (which was a publicly traded company). This presents significant challenges that will need to be overcome if an intervention is to be successful. Although possible, events to date appear to indicate that unless a powerful motivating factor is introduced, reform on X remains unlikely.
Despite Mr Musk’s proclamations of being a “free speech absolutist”, X’s re-activation of banned accounts went well beyond the ostensibly commendable objective of expanding participation by virtue of eliminating exclusion. Mr Musk’s reactivation of previously banned accounts was a significant instance of top-down intervention in the public sphere that necessarily changed the distribution of sociopolitical perspectives represented on the platform. These consequences have been compounded further still by Mr Musk’s support for specific socio-political ideas, attitudes and beliefs, which has served only to further distort public opinion. Moreover, Musk’s personal endorsement of hateful or otherwise problematic socio-political discourses on X serves to amplify their reach and influence.
In any event, and setting aside valid questions about what Mr Musk is entitled to do with his property, the most fundamental problems raised by X are as a symptom rather than a disease. Given the same opportunities and affordances as Mr Musk, it stands to reason that similar if not identical outcomes would eventuate on any other social media platform if it were to implement the same conditions as X. Although it is playing an increasingly significant role in the production and consumption of misogyny, xenophobia, bigotry and prejudice, X in and of itself cannot explain the appeal of these discourses.
That said, one would still hope that most people would be inclined to agree that the kinds of posts authored by the likes of Mr Tate, Ms Loomer, Mr Jones and Dr Peterson inflict significant harm and offer little, if any, utility or value. Deactivating at least some of the accounts that were reinstated under Mr Musk is not a curative remedy for antisocial behaviour, but it still promises better outcomes than doing nothing.
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