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Tesla and SpaceX CEO revealed this week that he had fired X’s (formerly Twitter) “Election Integrity” team, confirming on the platform that he purchased in 2022 that “they’re gone.”
In response to a post from X News Daily that stated Musk has cut “half of its Electoral integrity team, including the head of the group,” Musk replied, “Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.”
According to a report from The Hill, it’s not clear if the entire team was fired or not, but the outlet noted that this move from Musk occurred just under a month since the platform announced that it would be growing its safety and elections team ahead of the 2024 presidential election year.
Before purchasing the social media platform that was once called Twitter, Musk had voiced his intent to make the site a “town square” of sorts, where people could openly debate ideas and topics without fear of censorship.
Musk’s move to take over X came after months of Big Tech censorship. Shortly after acquiring the company, the billionaire innovator released a series of data drops through independent journalists known as the “Twitter Files.” These online drops of information detailed evidence of federal collusion with then-Twitter, in which certain narratives were squashed, and many accounts appeared to be blacklisted.
In the wake of Musk’s purchase of X, the platform has welcomed big names to its site. For example, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson now hosts an uncensored, sit-down talk show called “Tucker Carlson on X.” His episodes generate tens of millions of views and in some cases, even hundreds of millions of views.
While the specifics of the firing of the “Election Integrity” moderation team at X remains a little ambiguous, most people are hopeful that this indicates a more even-keeled approach to the platform’s deluge of political content in the face of another heated election year.
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