How Platform Changes Weakened X Ahead of Israel-Hamas Conflict 
Twitter’s old content moderation regime wasn’t perfect, but the events of the past two weeks have shown that certain safeguards existed for a reason, and that Elon Musk’s X is struggling without them. Beginning with paid verification and the loss of blue checks as form of authentication, the platform became flooded with accounts who could simply pay to have their replies prioritized by its algorithms—while simultaneously stripping a marker that was once used to prevent impersonation and fraud. Around the same time, Musk granted “amnesty” to accounts that had been suspended for infractions like hate speech, targeted harassment, and calls to violence. Now, as the conflict between Hamas and Israel unfolds, these policies have enabled bad actors to impersonate journalists and use X Premium accounts to spread misinformation—which they may be incentivized to do through the platform’s revenue-sharing program. At the same time, layoffs to X’s trust and safety teams have left it with fewer staff to respond to these issues or test new features. For instance, a joint TTP and ADL review found that X was placing advertisements in searches for well-known neo-Nazi groups, while platforms like Meta’s Facebook largely blocked the searches. Viewed as a whole, these cumulative changes have reshaped the flow of information on X and tilted the scales to favor bad actors who would have struggled to gain a foothold on the old Twitter.