Elon Musk Reinstates User Who Shared 'Child Exploitation Pictures'

A day after saying that Twitter, now called “X,” kicked off users who post child abuse content on the platform and took a dig at Mastodon, Elon Musk’s platform reinstated an account suspended for violating the microblogging site’s zero-tolerance policy against child sexual exploitation. 

What Happened: On Wednesday morning, a conspiracy theorist and QAnon follower on X had their account suddenly suspended. The influencer in question was Dom Lucre, whose posts regularly garnered millions of impressions on the platform, as identified by BBC reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh. 

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Musk, who has repeatedly asserted to have purged child abuse content from the platform, said that the suspension resulted from Lucre sharing “child exploitation pictures” related to the criminal conviction of an Australian man in the Philippines.

The tech billionaire provided a link to a CNN article detailing the case of Peter Scully, a man sentenced to 129 years in prison for heinous acts of “sexually abusing children as young as 18 months.” 

Musk said that the platform’s Content Safety Engineering or CSE team flagged the pictures in question. 

However, what makes this situation bizarre is that Musk went beyond explaining the suspension and reinstated Lucre’s account, saying X would remove the offending posts. 

At the time of writing, Lucre’s account had been fully restored with the said content removed. 

Why It’s Important: Last month, it was reported that Instagram’s recommendation system actively facilitates connections between pedophiles and content sellers, promoting numerous accounts dedicated to underage-sex content through explicit hashtag searches. 

Instagram had over three times the number of accounts selling child sex abuse material compared to Musk’s Twitter, which showed a faster response in removing such accounts despite its smaller user base.

At the time, Musk called the report “extremely concerning.” 

However, the decision to reinstate an account involved in such a severe violation of X’s policies has ignited a storm of criticism. Many are questioning whether Musk’s involvement with the platform has compromised the company’s commitment to combatting child exploitation. 

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