Elon Musk Blames 'Spam/Scam Bot' for X/Twitter Censoring Normal Pictures as 'Graphic Content'

Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), has publicly attributed the incorrect labeling of perfectly normal images as “graphic content” to a malfunction involving a “spam/scam bot.”

Business Insider reports that over the weekend, many X/Twitter users reported that regular images, including innocent pictures of books, trees, and cars, were blurred and tagged as “graphic content” on the platform. This issue is the latest in a series of technical glitches that X/Twitter has faced since Musk’s acquisition of the platform in October 2022.

In response to the issue, Musk acknowledged the problem in a post on his platform, stating that “an X spam/scam bot accidentally flagged many legitimate accounts today. This is being fixed.”

The social media site also addressed the issue through its “Safety” account, confirming that a bug had caused numerous posts to be incorrectly labeled and assuring users that the underlying problem was resolved and efforts were underway to remove the misapplied labels.

This glitch follows several other technical challenges faced by X/Twitter under Musk’s leadership. Notably, in December, the site experienced its largest outage since Musk’s takeover, with nearly 100,000 users reporting issues. Other notable incidents include a bug in August 2023 that temporarily disrupted all pictures and links posted before 2014, and a brief period in July when the site became largely unusable due to “rate limits” allegedly introduced to manage high levels of “data scraping.”

These repeated technical difficulties coincide with significant workforce reductions at X/Twitter. Musk has reportedly reduced the company’s staff by approximately 90 percent since assuming control. This drastic reduction has led insiders and experts to warn that the platform is increasingly susceptible to glitches and bugs due to the loss of “institutional knowledge.”