X (formerly known as Twitter) has announced plans to label parody accounts.
The social media site’s official Safety account has shared a post announcing that labels for parody accounts will be rolled out in the future.
“We’re rolling out profile labels for parody accounts to clearly distinguish these types of accounts and their content on our platform,” the post reads. “We designed these labels to increase transparency and to ensure that users are not deceived into thinking such accounts belong to the entity being parodied.
“Parody labels will be applied to both posts and accounts on X to clearly demonstrate the source of the content you’re seeing. We’ll share details soon on when the label will become mandatory for parody accounts.”
We’re rolling out profile labels for parody accounts to clearly distinguish these types of accounts and their content on our platform. We designed these labels to increase transparency and to ensure that users are not deceived into thinking such accounts belong to the entity…
— Safety (@Safety) January 10, 2025
It comes after Elon Musk announced back in 2022 that parody accounts would need to mark themselves as such or risk a permanent suspension following a number of Hollywood actors with verified accounts who had their pages suspended for parodying the social media platform’s boss including those of US comedians Sarah Silverman and Kathy Griffin.
“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” Musk said at the time.
Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Meta will get rid of fact-checkers and allow for more political content to be posted.
The action will be implemented across Meta platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Threads, and is set to “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship” implemented. This is a similar model to X (formerly known as Twitter), which relies on other users to add context and warnings to posts.
Zuckerberg announced the news in a recent video, saying that the move will begin in the United States and come in light of Donald Trump returning to The White House as US President.
The Community Notes approach was introduced to Twitter by Musk following his takeover of the platform. While some feel it has allowed for more freedom of speech, it has also been widely linked to a rise in trolling, misogyny and racism.
Back in November for instance, the re-relection of Donald Trump as president was tied to a spike in sexism. One example of this was the surge in the phrase “Your body, my choice” on the site – a retaliatory play on “My body, my choice,” which is used by advocates of reproductive rights. As per NBC, there was a 4,600 per cent increase in mentions of the terms “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” on X in the 24 hours of Trump’s victory.
