• X owner Elon Musk has restored an account that posted an explicit image containing child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
• According to the site’s policies, X has a “zero tolerance” on the sharing of such content, and its CEO said that accounts that do so are “removed.”
• The account in question is a right-wing-leaning, pro-Israel news account.

The Visegrad24 account on X was automatically suspended after, according to X owner Elon Musk, it posted an image containing explicit child sexual abuse material. The account was reinstated under a day later after Musk said he was “looking into it.”

Visegrad24 is a right-wing-leaning open-source news account started by two journalists from Poland. It posts media and news from the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. Many of its posts are pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel. It has around one million followers.

Posts are usually reposts of first-hand videos taken by persons on the scene combined with text, and often they contain explicit violent imagery. The account was suspended automatically by X after it posted an image “of that poor kid in Afghanistan being sodomized with a stick,” Musk posted after several users began asking why the account had been brought down.

“Account will be restored soon,” he added. Musk did not say why he had the account restored after X’s anti-child exploitation systems automatically suspended it. Visegrad24 likely shared the image for the same reason it shares other media containing explicit imagery, to inform its followers and push its agenda.

According to the official rules and policies for child safety on X, the company says: “X has zero tolerance towards any material that features or promotes child sexual exploitation. This may include real media, text, illustrated, or computer-generated media – including generative AI media.”

Importantly it adds, “Regardless of the intent, anyone viewing, sharing, linking, or engaging with any kind of child sexual exploitation material contributes to the re-victimization of the depicted children and puts children at an extreme risk of being harmed.”

X moderators will apparently remove any media depicting child sexual abuse and exploitation, “even if it was shared with good intent.” However, the company does at no point say in its rules and policies that it will permanently ban anyone who shares the material.

However, in a blog post from 2024 on the topic, CEO Linda Yaccarino told the US Senate Judiciary Committee “Now we also remove any account that engages with CSE (child sexual exploitation) content – whether it’s real or computer generated. Last year, X suspended 12.4 million accounts for violating our CSE policies.”

Visegrad24 was not removed, and while the image that got it suspended has been deleted, the account is still up and sharing information as of this morning. X seemingly does not differentiate between “removed” and “suspended” and Yaccarino may have simply adjusted her language to appease the US Senate.

But once again this is an example of Musk’s complete control over the social media platform. In the end, it isn’t X’s policies that matter when Musk makes and changes the rules on a whim as he sees fit. For example, in January the platform banned several accounts of journalists who criticised Musk.

“I can’t think of anything I’ve posted lately that would be worthy of suspensions. Although I have written multiple critical reports about Twitter/X and Elon Musk,” journalist Steven Monacelli told Vice after he and other writers critical of Musk received permanent bans on their accounts with only the explanation that “X suspends accounts that violate the rules of X.”

Many of the accounts were restored soon after publications like Vice and Forbes reported on the bannings.

[Image – Visegrad24 on X]