X

Report: Terrorists seem to be paying X to generate propaganda with Grok

AI, chatbot, Donald Trump, elon musk, grok, Policy, sanctions, Terrorism, X, xAI / Beth Washington / May 15, 2025

Back in February, Elon Musk skewered the Treasury Department for lacking “basic controls” to stop payments to terrorist organizations, boasting at the Oval Office that “any company” has those controls.

Fast-forward three months, and now Musk’s social media platform X is suspected of taking payments from sanctioned terrorists and providing premium features that make it easier to raise funds and spread propaganda—including through X’s chatbot Grok. Groups seemingly benefiting from X include Houthi rebels, Hezbollah, and Hamas, as well as groups from Syria, Kuwait, and Iran. Some accounts have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, paying to boost their reach while X seemingly looks the other way.

In a report released Thursday, the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) flagged popular accounts seemingly linked to US-sanctioned terrorists. Some of the accounts bear “ID verified” badges, suggesting that X may be going against its own policies that ban sanctioned terrorists from benefiting from its platform.

Even more troublingly, “several made use of revenue-generating features offered by X, including a button for tips,” the TTP reported.

On X, Premium subscribers pay $8 monthly or $84 annually, and Premium+ subscribers pay $40 monthly or $395 annually. Verified organizations pay X between $200 and $1,000 monthly, or up to $10,000 annually for access to Premium+. These subscriptions come with perks, allowing suspected terrorist accounts to share longer text and video posts, offer subscribers paid content, create communities, accept gifts, and amplify their propaganda.

Disturbingly, the TTP found that X’s chatbot Grok also appears to be helping to whitewash accounts linked to sanctioned terrorists.

In its report, the TTP noted that an account with the handle “hasmokaled”—which apparently belongs to “a key Hezbollah money exchanger,” Hassan Moukalled—at one point had a blue checkmark with 60,000 followers. While the Treasury Department has sanctioned Moukalled for propping up efforts “to continue to exploit and exacerbate Lebanon’s economic crisis,” clicking the Grok AI profile summary button seems to rely on Moukalled’s own posts and his followers’ impressions of his posts and therefore generated praise.

Report: Terrorists seem to be paying X to generate propaganda with Grok Read More »

xAI’s Grok suddenly can’t stop bringing up “white genocide” in South Africa

AI, boer, genocide, grok, large language model, llm, South Africa, Twitter, X / Mike M. / May 15, 2025

Where could Grok have gotten these ideas?

The treatment of white farmers in South Africa has been a hobbyhorse of South African X owner Elon Musk for quite a while. In 2023, he responded to a video purportedly showing crowds chanting “kill the Boer, kill the White Farmer” with a post alleging South African President Cyril Ramaphosa of remaining silent while people “openly [push] for genocide of white people in South Africa.” Musk was posting other responses focusing on the issue as recently as Wednesday.

They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa. @CyrilRamaphosa, why do you say nothing?

— gorklon rust (@elonmusk) July 31, 2023

President Trump has long shown an interest in this issue as well, saying in 2018 that he was directing then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.” More recently, Trump granted “refugee” status to dozens of white Afrikaners, even as his administration ends protections for refugees from other countries

Former American Ambassador to South Africa and Democratic politician Patrick Gaspard posted in 2018 that the idea of large-scale killings of white South African farmers is a “disproven racial myth.”

In launching the Grok 3 model in February, Musk said it was a “maximally truth-seeking AI, even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct.” X’s “About Grok” page says that the model is undergoing constant improvement to “ensure Grok remains politically unbiased and provides balanced answers.”

But the recent turn toward unprompted discussions of alleged South African “genocide” has many questioning what kind of explicit adjustments Grok’s political opinions may be getting from human tinkering behind the curtain. “The algorithms for Musk products have been politically tampered with nearly beyond recognition,” journalist Seth Abramson wrote in one representative skeptical post. “They tweaked a dial on the sentence imitator machine and now everything is about white South Africans,” a user with the handle Guybrush Threepwood glibly theorized.

Representatives from xAI were not immediately available to respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica.

xAI’s Grok suddenly can’t stop bringing up “white genocide” in South Africa Read More »

Disgruntled users roast X for killing Support account

elon musk, Policy, Social Media, Twitter, X / Mike M. / April 17, 2025

After X (formerly Twitter) announced it would be killing its “Support” account, disgruntled users quickly roasted the social media platform for providing “essentially non-existent” support.

“We’ll soon be closing this account to streamline how users can contact us for help,” X’s Support account posted, explaining that now, paid “subscribers can get support via @Premium, and everyone can get help through our Help Center.”

On X, the Support account was one of the few paths that users had to publicly seek support for help requests the platform seemed to be ignoring. For suspended users, it was viewed as a lifeline. Replies to the account were commonly flooded with users trying to get X to fix reported issues, and several seemingly paying users cracked jokes in response to the news that the account would soon be removed.

“Lololol your support for Premium is essentially non-existent,” a subscriber with more than 200,000 followers wrote, while another quipped “Okay, so no more support? lol.”

On Reddit, X users recently suggested that contacting the Premium account is the only way to get human assistance after briefly interacting with a bot. But some self-described Premium users complained of waiting six months or longer for responses from X’s help center in the Support thread.

Some users who don’t pay for access to the platform similarly complained. But for paid subscribers or content creators, lack of Premium support is perhaps most frustrating, as one user claimed their account had been under review for years, allegedly depriving them of revenue. And another user claimed they’d had “no luck getting @Premium to look into” an account suspension while supposedly still getting charged. Several accused X of sending users into a never-ending loop, where the help center only serves to link users to the help center.

Disgruntled users roast X for killing Support account Read More »

Twitch makes deal to escape Elon Musk suit alleging X ad boycott conspiracy

elon musk, online advertising, Policy, twitch, Twitter, twitter ad boycott, X / Shannon Garcia / April 9, 2025

Instead, it appears that X decided to sue Twitch after discovering that Twitch was among advertisers who directly referenced the WFA’s brand safety guidelines in its own community guidelines and terms of service. X likely saw this as evidence that Twitch was allegedly conspiring with the WFA to restrict then-Twitter’s ad revenue, since X alleged that Twitch reduced ad purchases to “only a de minimis amount outside the United States, after November 2022,” X’s complaint said.

“The Advertiser Defendants and other GARM-member advertisers acted in parallel to discontinue their purchases of advertising from Twitter, in a marked departure from their prior pattern of purchases,” X’s complaint said.

Now, it seems that X has agreed to drop Twitch from the suit, perhaps partly because the complaint X had about Twitch adhering to WFA brand safety standards is defused since the WFA disbanded the ad industry arm that set those standards.

Unilever struck a similar deal to wriggle out of the litigation, Reuters noted, and remained similarly quiet on the terms, only saying that the brand remained “committed to meeting our responsibility standards to ensure the safety and performance of our brands on the platform.” But other advertisers, including Colgate, CVS, LEGO, Mars, Pinterest, Shell, and Tyson Foods, so far have not.

For Twitch, its deal seems to clearly take a target off its back at a time when some advertisers are reportedly returning to X to stay out of Musk’s crosshairs. Getting out now could spare substantial costs as the lawsuit drags on, even though X CEO Linda Yaccarino declared the ad boycott was over in January. X is still $12 billion in debt, X claimed, after Musk’s xAI bought X last month. External data in January seemed to suggest many big brands were still hesitant to return to the platform, despite Musk’s apparent legal strong-arming and political influence in the Trump administration.

Ars could not immediately reach Twitch or X for comment. But the court docket showed that Twitch was up against a deadline to respond to the lawsuit by mid-May, which likely increased pressure to reach an agreement before Twitch was forced to invest in raising a defense.

Twitch makes deal to escape Elon Musk suit alleging X ad boycott conspiracy Read More »

Carmack defends AI tools after Quake fan calls Microsoft AI demo “disgusting”

AI, AI criticism, AI development tools, Biz & IT, game development, game synthesis, gaming, id Software, john carmack, machine learning, microsoft, quake, quake ii, Tim Sweeney, X / DJ Henderson / April 9, 2025

The current generative Quake II demo represents a slight advancement from Microsoft’s previous generative AI gaming model (confusingly titled “WHAM” with only one “M”) we covered in February. That earlier model, while showing progress in generating interactive gameplay footage, operated at 300×180 resolution at 10 frames per second—far below practical modern gaming standards. The new WHAMM demonstration doubles the resolution to 640×360. However, both remain well below what gamers expect from a functional video game in almost every conceivable way. It truly is an AI tech demo.

A Microsoft diagram of the WHAMM system. — A Microsoft diagram of the WHAM system. Credit: Microsoft

For example, the technology faces substantial challenges beyond just performance metrics. Microsoft acknowledges several limitations, including poor enemy interactions, a short context length of just 0.9 seconds (meaning the system forgets objects outside its view), and unreliable numerical tracking for game elements like health values.

Which brings us to another point: A significant gap persists between the technology’s marketing portrayal and its practical applications. While industry veterans like Carmack and Sweeney view AI as another tool in the development arsenal, demonstrations like the Quake II instance may create inflated expectations about AI’s current capabilities for complete game generation.

The most realistic near-term application of generative AI technology remains as coding assistants and perhaps rapid prototyping tools for developers, rather than a drop-in replacement for traditional game development pipelines. The technology’s current limitations suggest that human developers will remain essential for creating compelling, polished game experiences for now. But given the general pace of progress, that might be small comfort for those who worry about losing jobs to AI in the near-term.

Ultimately, Sweeney says not to worry: “There’s always a fear that automation will lead companies to make the same old products while employing fewer people to do it,” Sweeney wrote in a follow-up post on X. “But competition will ultimately lead to companies producing the best work they’re capable of given the new tools, and that tends to mean more jobs.”

And Carmack closed with this: “Will there be more or less game developer jobs? That is an open question. It could go the way of farming, where labor-saving technology allow a tiny fraction of the previous workforce to satisfy everyone, or it could be like social media, where creative entrepreneurship has flourished at many different scales. Regardless, “don’t use power tools because they take people’s jobs” is not a winning strategy.”

Carmack defends AI tools after Quake fan calls Microsoft AI demo “disgusting” Read More »

Even Trump may not be able to save Elon Musk from his old tweets

Donald Trump, elon musk, fraud, Policy, SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, Twitter, X / Shannon Garcia / April 1, 2025

A loss in the investors’ and SEC’s suits could force Musk to disgorge any ill-gotten gains from the alleged scheme, estimated at $150 million, as well as potential civil penalties.

The SEC and Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) did not respond to Ars’ request to comment. Investors’ lawyers declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.

SEC purge may slow down probes

Under the Biden administration, the SEC alleged that “Musk’s violation resulted in substantial economic harm to investors selling Twitter common stock.” For the lead plaintiffs in the investors’ suit, the Oklahoma Firefighters Pension and Retirement System, the scheme allegedly robbed retirees of gains used to sustain their quality of life at a particularly vulnerable time.

Musk has continued to argue that his alleged $200 million in savings from the scheme was minimal compared to his $44 billion purchase price. But the alleged gains represent about two-thirds of the $290 million price the billionaire paid to support Trump’s election, which won Musk a senior advisor position in the Trump administration, CNBC reported. So it’s seemingly not an insignificant amount of money in the grand scheme.

Likely bending to Musk’s influence, one of Trump’s earliest moves after taking office, CNBC reported, was reversing a 15-year-old policy allowing the SEC director of enforcement to launch probes like the one Musk is currently battling. It allowed the Tesla probe, for example, to be launched just seven days after Musk’s allegedly problematic tweets, the SEC boasted in a 2020 press release.

Now, after Trump’s rule change, investigations must be approved by a vote of SEC commissioners. That will likely slow down probes that the SEC had previously promised years ago would only speed up over time in order to more swiftly protect investors.

SEC expected to reduce corporate fines

For Musk, the SEC has long been a thorn in his side. At least two top officials (1, 2) cited the Tesla settlement as a career highlight, with the agency seeming especially proud of thinking “creatively about appropriate remedies,” the 2020 press release said. Monitoring Musk’s tweets, the SEC said, blocked “potential harm to investors” and put control over Musk’s tweets into the SEC’s hands.

Even Trump may not be able to save Elon Musk from his old tweets Read More »

Big brands are spending small sums on X to stay out of Musk’s crosshairs

advertising, elon musk, Policy, syndication, twitter ad boycott, X, x ad boycott, xAI / 9u50fv / March 31, 2025

According to data from Emarketer, X’s revenue will increase to $2.3 billion this year compared with $1.9 billion a year ago. However, global sales in 2022, when the group was known as Twitter and taken over by Musk, were $4.1 billion.

Total US ad spend on X was down by 2 percent in the first two months of 2025 compared with a year ago, according to data from market intelligence group Sensor Tower, despite the recent return of groups such as Hulu and Unilever.

American Express also rejoined the platform this year but its ad spend is down by about 80 percent compared with the first quarter of 2022, Sensor Tower said.

However, four large ad agencies—WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic Group, and Publicis—have recently agreed on deals, or are in talks, to set annual spending targets with X in so-called “upfront deals,” where advertisers commit to purchasing slots in advance.

X, WPP, Omnicom, and Publicis declined to comment. Interpublic Group did not respond to a request for comment.

Fears have risen within the advertising industry after X filed a federal antitrust lawsuit last summer against Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a coalition of brands, ad agencies, and some companies including Unilever, accusing them of coordinating an “illegal boycott” under the guise of a brand safety initiative. The Republican-led House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary has also leveled similar accusations.

Unilever was dropped from X’s lawsuit after it restarted advertising on the social media platform in October.

Following discussions with their legal team, some staff at WPP’s GroupM now feel concerned about what they put in writing about X or communicate over video conferencing given the lawsuit, according to one person familiar with the matter.

Another advertising executive noted that the planned $13 billion merger between Omnicom and Interpublic had been delayed by a further request for information from a US watchdog this month, holding the threat of regulatory intervention over the deal.

Big brands are spending small sums on X to stay out of Musk’s crosshairs Read More »

Meta plans to test and tinker with X’s community notes algorithm

community notes, facebook, Instagram, Meta, misinformation, Policy, threads, Twitter, X / DJ Henderson / March 14, 2025

Meta also confirmed that it won’t be reducing visibility of misleading posts with community notes. That’s a change from the prior system, Meta noted, which had penalties associated with fact-checking.

According to Meta, X’s algorithm cannot be gamed, supposedly safeguarding “against organized campaigns” striving to manipulate notes and “influence what notes get published or what they say.” Meta claims it will rely on external research on community notes to avoid that pitfall, but as recently as last October, outside researchers had suggested that X’s Community Notes were easily sabotaged by toxic X users.

“We don’t expect this process to be perfect, but we’ll continue to improve as we learn,” Meta said.

Meta confirmed that the company plans to tweak X’s algorithm over time to develop its own version of community notes, which “may explore different or adjusted algorithms to support how Community Notes are ranked and rated.”

In a post, X’s Support account said that X was “excited” that Meta was using its “well-established, academically studied program as a foundation” for its community notes.

Meta plans to test and tinker with X’s community notes algorithm Read More »

X’s globe-trotting defense of ads on Nazi posts violates TOS, Media Matters says

ad boycott, content moderation, elon musk, hate speech, linda yaccarino, media matters, online advertising, Policy, Social Media, Twitter, X, x ad boycott / Mike M. / March 12, 2025

Part of the problem appeared to be decreased spending from big brands that did return, like reportedly Apple. Other dips were linked to X’s decision to partner with adtech companies, splitting ad revenue with Magnite, Google, and PubMatic, Business Insider reported. The CEO of marketing consultancy Ebiquity, Ruben Schreurs, told Business Insider that most of the top 100 global advertisers he works with were still hesitant to invest in X, confirming “no signs of a mass return.”

For X, the ad boycott has tanked revenue for years, even putting X on the brink of bankruptcy, Musk claimed. The billionaire paid $44 billion for the platform, and at the end of 2024, Fidelity estimated that X was worth just $9.4 billion, CNN reported.

But at the start of 2025, analysts predicted that advertisers may return to X to garner political favor with Musk, who remains a senior advisor in the Trump administration. Perhaps more importantly in the short-term, sources also told Bloomberg that X could potentially raise as much as Musk paid—$44 billion—from investors willing to help X pay down its debt to support new payments and video products.

That could put a Band-Aid on X’s financial wounds as Yaccarino attempts to persuade major brands that X isn’t toxic (while X sues some of them) and Musk tries to turn the social media platform once known as Twitter into an “everything app” as ubiquitous in the US as WeChat in China.

MMFA alleges that its research, which shows how toxic X is today, has been stifled by Musk’s suits, but other groups have filled the gap. The Center for Countering Digital Hate has resumed its reporting since defeating X’s lawsuit last March, and, most recently, University of California, Berkeley, researchers conducted a February analysis showing that “hate speech on the social media platform X rose about 50 percent” in the eight months after Musk’s 2022 purchase, which suggests that advertisers had potentially good reason to be spooked by changes at X and that those changes continue to keep them at bay today.

“Musk has continually tried to blame others for this loss in revenue since his takeover,” MMFA’s complaint said, alleging that all three suits were filed to intimidate MMFA “for having dared to publish an article Musk did not like.”

X’s globe-trotting defense of ads on Nazi posts violates TOS, Media Matters says Read More »

Elon Musk blames X outages on “massive cyberattack”

elon musk, Social Media, Twitter, Uncategorized, X, x corp, x outage / Beth Washington / March 11, 2025

After DownDetector reported that tens of thousands of users globally experienced repeated X (formerly Twitter) outages, Elon Musk confirmed the issues are due to an ongoing cyberattack on the platform.

“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” Musk wrote on X. “We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”

Details remain vague beyond Musk’s post, but rumors were circulating that X was under a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack.

X’s official support channel, which has been dormant since August, has so far remained silent on the outage, but one user asked Grok—X’s chatbot that provides AI summaries of news—what was going on, and the chatbot echoed suspicions about the DDOS attack while raising other theories.

“Over 40,000 users reported issues, with the platform struggling to load globally,” Grok said. “No clear motive yet, but some speculate it’s political since X is the only target. Outages hit hard in the US, Switzerland, and beyond.”

As X goes down, users cry for Twitter

It has been almost two years since Elon Musk declared that Twitter “no longer exists,” haphazardly rushing to rebrand his social media company as X despite critics warning that users wouldn’t easily abandon the Twitter brand.

Fast-forward to today, and Musk got a reminder that his efforts to kill off the Twitter brand never really caught on with a large chunk of his platform.

Elon Musk blames X outages on “massive cyberattack” Read More »

Elon Musk to “fix” Community Notes after they contradict Trump

community notes, disinformation, Donald Trump, elon musk, fact checking, misinformation, Policy, Twitter, X / Mike M. / February 22, 2025

Elon Musk apparently no longer believes that crowdsourcing fact-checking through Community Notes can never be manipulated and is, thus, the best way to correct bad posts on his social media platform X.

Community Notes are supposed to be added to posts to limit misinformation spread after a broad consensus is reached among X users with diverse viewpoints on what corrections are needed. But Musk now claims a “fix” is needed to prevent supposedly outside influencers from allegedly gaming the system.

“Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media,” Musk wrote on X. “Working to fix this.”

Musk’s announcement came after Community Notes were added to X posts discussing a poll generating favorable ratings for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That poll was conducted by a private Ukrainian company in partnership with a state university whose supervisory board was appointed by the Ukrainian government, creating what Musk seems to view as a conflict of interest.

Although other independent polling recently documented a similar increase in Zelenskyy’s approval rating, NBC News reported, the specific poll cited in X notes contradicted Donald Trump’s claim that Zelenskyy is unpopular, and Musk seemed to expect X notes should instead be providing context to defend Trump’s viewpoint. Musk even suggested that by pointing to the supposedly government-linked poll in Community Notes, X users were spreading misinformation.

“It should be utterly obvious that a Zelensky[y]-controlled poll about his OWN approval is not credible!!” Musk wrote on X.

Musk’s attack on Community Notes is somewhat surprising. Although he has always maintained that Community Notes aren’t “perfect,” he has defended Community Notes through multiple European Union probes challenging their effectiveness and declared that the goal of the crowdsourcing effort was to make X “by far the best source of truth on Earth.” At CES 2025, X CEO Linda Yaccarino bragged that Community Notes are “good for the world.”

Yaccarino invited audience members to “think about it as this global collective consciousness keeping each other accountable at global scale in real time,” but just one month later, Musk is suddenly casting doubts on that characterization while the European Union continues to probe X.

Perhaps most significantly, Musk previously insisted as recently as last year that Community Notes could not be manipulated, even by Musk. He strongly disputed a 2024 report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate that claimed that toxic X users were downranking accurate notes that they personally disagreed with, claiming any attempt at gaming Community Notes would stick out like a “neon sore thumb.”

Elon Musk to “fix” Community Notes after they contradict Trump Read More »

X is reportedly blocking links to secure Signal contact pages

Security, signa, Tech, Twitter, X / DJ Henderson / February 18, 2025

X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, is seemingly blocking links to Signal, the encrypted messaging platform, according to journalist Matt Binder and other firsthand accounts.

Binder wrote in his Disruptionist newsletter Sunday that links to Signal.me, a domain that offers a way to connect directly to Signal users, are blocked on public posts, direct messages, and profile pages. Error messages—including “Message not sent,” “Something went wrong,” and profiles tagged as “considered malware” or “potentially harmful”—give no direct suggestion of a block. But posts on X, reporting at The Verge, and other sources suggest that Signal.me links are broadly banned.

Signal.me links that were already posted on X prior to the recent change now show a “Warning: this link may be unsafe” interstitial page rather than opening the link directly. Links to Signal handles and the Signal homepage are still functioning on X.

Binder, a former Mashable reporter who was once blocked by X (then Twitter) for reporting on owner Elon Musk and accounts related to his private jet travel, credited the first reports to an X post by security research firm Mysk.

X is reportedly blocking links to secure Signal contact pages Read More »