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But making the situation worse is that Musk apparently has done it all on purpose or at least with reckless disregard for his responsibilities to the common good.
Two factors dominate the mess, and neither of them has happened by mistake. One is the matter of what gets promoted by the platform’s algorithms in order to monetize certain posts, such as the supposed church bombing. Musk dismantled Twitter’s verification system, in which a check mark denoted a verified source, such as a prominent public figure or a news organization. That practice alone would have prevented the faked-up Jerusalem Post story from getting the traction it did.
Now the blue checks go to not to verified users but to those who pay for them, including many bad actors. X’s algorithm sends those posts to the top of its feed, flooding the zone with garbage.
The other big change is the sharp decline in internal efforts to fact-check or verify information. Not long after buying Twitter, Musk got rid of most of the Twitter content moderation staff that had tried to keep things as accurate as possible by flagging fake accounts and attaching warnings.
Then, in very recent months, according to the Information, Musk’s site stopped using a software tool used to identify organized misinformation.
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Twitter’s accelerating demise is not among the worst atrocities of the past week. But, at a crucial time, it has managed to add to the world’s misery
www.theguardian.com