Get Your Complacent Ass Off X
Enough excuses
CW: Child sexual abuse
Twitter's tragic collapse into the white nationalist trash fire it became will be the subject of many articles, books, documentaries and, hopefully, testimonies for years to come. This newsletter itself began as a result of Musk's forced purchase of the app. Even so, I remained on the platform with gusto until November of 2024. Trump's second presidential win proved to me that there was no hope of improvement for the app.
Since that time, I have found there's little utility in shaming someone into changing their habits. I still believe that to be the case. Individual people being on a platform with problems is unfortunately the backbone of the internet. Meta, parent company for Facebook and Instagram, is implicated in perpetuating a genocide of Rohingya people in Myanmar. One lawsuit alleges Instagram buried an internal study that their social media caused harm. Instagram knew its app hurt teenage users, yet was reported to have buried that study. Bluesky, my platform of choice, has repeatedly cracked down on dissenting voices and acquiesced to laws requiring censorship. They're all pretty bad.
One could even forgive users for sticking with the platform despite its new reputation as a haven for white supremacists, since it's undoubtedly being led by one. There are Nazis everywhere on the internet, right? What difference is one account remaining on X going to make? There is still a use for X, one must begrudgingly admit. News still happens and breaks regularly there, for example.
But floodgates opened after news broke that Grok, Elon Musk's pet AI engine operating on X under xAI, was generating thousands of instances of sexual non-consensual image generation targeting regular users. According to a third-party report published in an article by Bloomberg, Grok generates just over 84 times more deepfakes than the top five deepfake sites combined. A WIRED analyst found "more than 15,000 sexualized AI-generated images created over a two-hour period on December 31."
Horrifically, a sizable number of these generated images appear to be of minors, meaning that the platform has been spreading deepfake Child Sexual Assault Material (CSAM) at unprecedented levels. The UK-based Internet Watch Foundation, a child safety watchdog, found that deepfake sexualized images of children between 11 and 13 were created using Grok's AI tool. These images were then used to generate depictions of "penetrative sexual activity" when applied to a different AI tool.
The initial response from X leadership was deeply hollow. Despite Grok's claim that "Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers," this is not true. As Robert Hart reported for The Verge, "All X users — including free ones — can still use Grok to edit and create images, including the sexually suggestive deepfakes that landed Grok in hot water to begin with."
Uproar from the UK government over this disgusting and vile behaviour has not stopped the pedophile engine. Musk refuses to turn off image generation for Grok. Yes, he could shut it down at any moment. But by refusing to do so, Musk is now an instrumental purveyor of CSAM material and non-consensual deepfakes the world over.
Scott Martin
Canada's government, meanwhile, is continuing to provide cover for X and Grok's non-consensual deepfake and CSAM generation. Evan Solomon, Canadian Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, refused an interview with Global News and instead posted a statement on X on the subject. "Platforms and AI developers have a duty to prevent this harm," Solomon wrote, with no prepared consequences for those who knowingly perpetuate it. Spineless behaviour abounds, as the federal government affirmed that it would continue to use X despite it now becoming a hub for CSAM generation.
It goes beyond our government, though. Canadian news organizations also retain a presence in the digital CSAM factory. Global News, CTV News, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail all retain a presence on the website. As do prominent journalists like Rosemary Barton, Vassy Kapelos, Colin D'Mello, Ian Hanomansing and countless others. The presence of these outlets and figures legitimizes the website as a tool for communication, validating the decision to continue using it.
Grok ranting about white genocide in South Africa, praising Adolf Hitler and providing value to a man who threw a Nazi salute twice in front of the world was not enough for some people to leave. But now that Musk is openly allowing it to generate CSAM on a mass scale (something he is profiting from), will this be enough to admit that the time has come? Apparently, not to our governments, journalists and news outlets.
Twitter is dead. In its place we have a simulacrum of 8chan; a hub for white supremacists and pedophiles. Every user on that website is another drop in the bucket of value provided to Musk's fascist project and his CSAM engine. It's infuriating beyond belief that our governments and news institutions haven't ditched the platform, or even threatened to do so, over this fact. What little reports we have from news organizations abandoning the platform showed little to no impact on traffic to their websites. PressProgress editor Luke LeBrun found minimal reach for Liberal MPs who posted on the site. These show that the choice to stay isn't about a cynical profit motive, or even a desire to communicate with constituents.
It's not as though there is no precedent to abandoning X. The Canadian government banned TikTok on federal devices with no evidence that "government information has been compromised." Senator Paula Simons has left the platform and continually advocated for the government to distance from it. Senator Kim Pate took her lead and left as well. We know it's possible. They just refuse.
There was a time when I was understanding of those who kept ties to the shredded remnants of Twitter. Even though I still believe shame is unhelpful, what other tactic is there left? No systemic mechanism is there to enforce this change. Regardless of what choice one makes to stay on the site, if you have an active account, you are now making a knowing choice to, in some small way, perpetuate deep harm. Governments and public figures are more complicit, of course, but every shred of value contributes to this.
Some will no doubt continue like nothing has changed, regardless of the sickening shit being spewed as a result. But they are too far-gone to reach. We're talking about the widespread manufacture of material depicting child sexual exploitation. So if explicit white nationalist propaganda and widespread manufacture of deepfake CSAM don't cross the line... What does?
So please, if you haven't already: Get the fuck off of X.
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