Let’s be honest, ever since Elon Musk took over X, formerly Twitter, the social media platform has become a murky pool of misinformation and anti-Black racism. It has also been accused by the NAACP of poisoning Black communities in Tennessee and Mississippi via chemical runoff from its data centers, which are polluting the air to in order to power Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok.
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Last week, we also told you that Musk had endorsed a white nationalist tweet that should have raised everyone’s eyebrows. But these are not the only reasons Musk’s X platform should concern you. We’ve compiled a list of other controversial issues that have surfaced on the app.
Grok Chatbot Driving Anti-Black Racism
Musk’s AI chatbot Grok has been controversial since its launch on the platform in 2023, but real issues began to arise after the bot received its “Aurora” feature, which allows it to generate images. According to The Guardian, the update was used to generate multiple racist images of Black soccer athletes picking cotton or eating bananas while surrounded by monkeys. Users were not only generating these images but were also incentivized to do so.
Since Elon Musk’s 2022 relaunch of Twitter Blue, users can subscribe to the platform and earn money from viral posts. Callum Hood, the head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told The Guardian that the feature encourages users to create controversial posts they know will go viral and will earn them some extra cash.
“The thing that X has done, to a degree that no other mainstream platform has done, is to offer cash incentives to accounts to do this, so accounts on X are very deliberately posting the most naked hate and disinformation possible,” Hood said.
This is not the only image-generation controversy involving Grok.
Posts Sexualizing Women
Recently, Grok has been under fire for being used to sexualize women directly under their posts. It was happening so often that the AI chatbot was banned completely in Malaysia and Indonesia. It has also been blocked from generating such images in the United Kingdom after Prime Minister Keir Starmer threatened to have the entire platform banned, according to the BBC.
One Black woman on TikTok, @YannaLuv__, showed her followers the sexual harassment she had received from users on X asking Grok to undress her or put themselves in the picture with her.
“Just don’t post pictures of yourself, because people will ask AI to put you next to random men, and then make them put you in a bikini with the man who is now White, and it will make you kiss the man. It’s just too much,” she said.
In the TikTok comments, users wrote that they found the chatbot disturbing and were worried about how it would harm minors on the platform, too.
“This is not smth to joke about what if she was A MINOR,” wrote one user.
“This is so scary,” added another.
One user called for Elon Musk to be sued for allowing this content on X: “Someone sue elon musk.”
Foreign MAGA Accounts Spreading Misinformation
At the end of November last year, a new update that revealed the location of X users brought shocking information to light. Many MAGA influencers were shown to be based in foreign countries.
According to CNN, one prominent MAGA account, @MAGANationX, which had 400,000 followers, was shown to be based in Eastern Europe despite its pro-Trump and pro-American stance. Another account with 67,000 followers that went by the handle @AmericaFirst posted similar content but was based in Bangladesh.
Both accounts have been suspended since the location feature launched, but many more accounts like them helped spread misinformation and MAGA endorsements to earn some of the big bucks X gives to its subscription users, per CNN.
While there is no way to confirm that a user’s location is completely accurate—as it can be affected by recent travel or a VPN—X said the information has nearly 99% accuracy, according to the BBC.
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