The Washington Post reports:

Prominent X accounts advocating for Vice President Kamala Harris have been labeled as spam or restricted in recent weeks, triggering alarm among some Democrats that Elon Musk’s social media platform is tilted in favor of his chosen candidate, former president Donald Trump.

Only a handful of pro-Harris accounts, including one called “White Dudes for Harris,” appear to have been affected. But the recurring issues are raising questions about whether Musk’s platform is intentionally censoring the pages, or if the deep staff cuts he made after buying the company in 2022 have left the platform ill-equipped for the surge in political speech ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

Musk’s recent posts on X — which have actively courted support for Trump and amplified a manipulated video of Harris — highlight the potential risks of having the owner of a major platform openly champion a presidential candidate. This dynamic is unprecedented, as other social media CEOs and founders have largely stayed out of the political fray.

“It’s curious,” Ross Morales Rocketto, an organizer of White Dudes for Harris, a pro-Harris group whose account was affected twice in the course of a week. “Clearly we’re political, so it just continues to feel like another iteration of Musk Twitter impacting people’s political speech when it not does not align with him.”

White Dudes for Harris drew more than 200,000 people to an online fundraiser last week that raised more than $4 million. Shortly after the event, the group had its X account suspended. It was reinstated several hours later. On Tuesday, the group was told by X that its reach on the platform could be restricted because the group’s page “may contain spam or be engaging in other types of platform manipulation,” according to a screenshot shared by organizers.

Another account, “Progressives for Harris,” was temporarily suspended and labeled as spam on Friday shortly after the group announced that prominent politicians such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would headline an upcoming online rally.

And at least one official campaign account has also apparently been restricted on X. On the day Biden withdrew from the race last month and endorsed Harris, some users reported they were unable to follow her official campaign account, @KamalaHQ.

Musk and X did not respond to a request for comment.

“We’re talking about four episodes out of a lot of Harris content on X,” said Daniel Kreiss, a principal researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina. “But without transparency into why enforcement decisions are being made, given the very strong political activism of the owner, people are going to raise questions.” [Continue reading…]