How X wants to better protect children in future
X, the online platform formerly known as Twitter, plans to open an office in Texas to combat content related to child sexual abuse.
The "Trust and Safety Center of Excellence" will hire 100 moderators to remove such content from the platform, operations director Joe Benarroch told AFP news agency on Saturday (local time). X does not have a child-focused line of business, but it is important that the company makes these investments "to deter offenders from using our platform for any distribution or engagement with child sexual exploitation content," Benarroch wrote in an email.
Measure comes before major hearing
According to him, children under the age of 13 cannot even register on the platform, while accounts of young users aged 13 to 17 are subject to strict data protection regulations and cannot be targeted by advertisers. The announcement of the offensive against child sexual abuse content was made ahead of an upcoming hearing of major internet platforms on this topic before the US Senate Judiciary Committee. In addition to representatives from Meta, Tiktok, Discord and Snap, X CEO Linda Yaccarino will testify there.
US technology entrepreneur Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 for 44 billion dollars. In the course of a chaotic restructuring of the company, Musk not only gave the short message service a new name, X, he also drastically reduced the moderation of content and allowed users who had been banned for breaking the rules - the most famous of whom was former US President Donald Trump - back onto the platform. Observers denounce a significant increase in hate messages and false information on X. (SDA)
