After false sexual photographs circulated, Taylor Swift’s X searches were restricted

Following the widespread circulation of fictitious, sexually suggestive photos of the pop singer on social media this week, the social networking platform X has disabled users from searching for Taylor Swift, an executive announced on Sunday. When Swift’s name was searched for on the social networking site that was once known as Twitter on Sunday afternoon, an error message stating, “Something went wrong,” appeared. Try loading again.

In a statement, Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X, stated, “This is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue.” Swift broke records on her globe tour, became the most streamed musician globally, and was awarded Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2023.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary for the White House, described the phony photos as “alarming” on Friday and stated that social media platforms have an obligation to stop the propagation of false information.

During a press conference, Jean-Pierre stated that women are disproportionately affected by the lack of enforcement against fraudulent images, which might be produced by artificial intelligence (AI). According to a New York Times article, Swift’s X account was terminated after one of her images was seen 47 million times.

Following his 2022 acquisition of Twitter, entrepreneur Elon Musk has been under fire for both his own divisive posts and his attempts to change the platform’s content control guidelines. A lot of platform marketers have reduced their expenditure out of concern that their ads might run alongside offensive content.

X has stated that “healthy” posts account for the vast majority of content views. “Freedom of speech, not reach” is the new policy that Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino have articulated. It limits the circulation of certain postings but does not remove them.

The Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens are playing in the NFL playoffs at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT), and Swift, who is dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, is anticipated to be there. This is the reason for the search limits.