X purges 13,000 accounts linked to suspected meddling ahead of US midterms

gvfsa

>...as well as content intended to discourage participation. Uh? That's odd. In my country I don't vote because I don't feel represented and I encourage others in my situation to do the same. Would I get banned for saying that?

brodouevencode

Reminder that Twitter (X) has done similar things (shadow-banning) before.

lawn

Knowing Musk, they probably purged pro Democrats while leaving Russian bots alone.

mingus88

What a blow to Elon to lose his account in his own platform

olooney

Twitter over 300 million daily active users. 13,000 is 0.004% of that. A standard drop of water is 0.05 ml. A standard household bucket is about 3 gallons. So the proverbial "drop in the bucket" is 0.0004%. So, for all you naysayers out there saying this is just a drop in the bucket, it's literally x10 that. Why, if they could get this up to a repeatable process and ban 13,000 accounts per day, that would be 1.5% every year. After a couple of years of work, that might even be perceptible to the average user. Sounds like the problem is well in hand.

stetrain

I'm sure this was done in a perfectly fair and balanced manner and not in a way that is at all aligned to the CEO's publicly stated politics.

voidhorse

Meanwhile: https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-midterms-republicans-do... Manipulation of elections is OK as long as you do it with money.

bratsche

Probably 13,000 accounts that suddenly went dark after Ukraine took out some datacenter in Russia recently.

feverzsj

Posts on "For you" are mostly pro right/republican/Trump these days, even if you block such accounts frequently.

syngrog66

meanwhile Musk spending $250M+ on Republican campaigns. but sure, ban a few Twitter accounts

ChrisRR

Thank you HN for highlighting new usernames in green

tavavex

Sounds like they're just getting rid of competition

linuxftw

A fraction of what the UK imprisons for wrong think each year.

xphos

I am fine with content policeing actions from being legal but I think we content enforcement of this nature on platforms that live on freedom of press and speech should be forced to publicize when that take action against accounts. Publicize the lists for bans, and reason for it. Here the reason is given but its not account linked so its hard to say if the reason is justifed with the accounts histories. Maybe the government needs a meta organization that upholds freedom of speech enforcement from platforms and companies that get broad Section 230 protections. I.e Facebook, X, Twitch, Youtube, etc. If a company can just purge you soruce of speech entirely the country protections seem lacking for the public welfare. Curious what other people think. I know an agency like this is rife to partisan infiltration but if its roll is to for unbanning rather than banning I think the scope of its potential abuse would be extremely narrow.

rasz

>X purges 13,000 accounts Yeah, Im sure its all “After careful review,” In other news I just read today how Gough Luis account got banned for posting organic content and linking to his own blog. https://goughlui.com/2026/10/15/opinion-death-of-the-old-int... Sad but accurate summary about current state of internet is “There is no incentive to be honest, aside from having a conscience.”