Twitter

The FBI silenced an employee who tried to tell Twitter the Hunter Biden laptop story was real on the day it came out, newly released chat logs show.

On October 14, 2020, the day the New York Post first reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the FBI told employees “do not discuss [the] Biden matter” and imposed a “gag order” on an analyst who tried to confirm the story’s veracity to Twitter during a meeting, according to chat logs released by the House Judiciary Committee.

India's IT ministry has unlawfully expanded censorship powers to allow the easier removal of online content and empowered "countless" government officials to execute such orders, Elon Musk's X has alleged in a new lawsuit against New Delhi.

The lawsuit and the allegations mark an escalation in an ongoing legal dispute between X and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government over how New Delhi orders content to be taken down. It also comes as Musk is getting closer to launching his other key ventures Starlink and Tesla in India.

Elon Musk claimed on Monday afternoon that X was targeted in a “massive cyber-attack” that resulted in the intermittent service outages that had brought down his social network throughout the day. The platform, formerly known as Twitter, had been unresponsive for many users as posts failed to load.

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” the platform’s CEO posted. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”

Social media platform X went down intermittently on Monday, with owner Elon Musk blaming an unusually powerful cyberattack.

"We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved," Musk said in a post on X earlier Monday.

He did not clarify exactly what he meant by "a lot of resources" and his comments drew skepticism from cybersecurity specialists, who pointed out that attacks of this nature — called denials of service — have repeatedly been executed by small groups or individuals.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk said that the social media platform he owns is facing a "massive cyberattack," adding that the attack appears to be coming from the Ukraine area.

"Well… we're not sure exactly what happened, but there was a massive cyberattack to try to bring down the ecosystem with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area," he said while speaking to Fox Business' Larry Kudlow on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Musk posted about the attack on X.

Yesterday morning, like I do every morning, I woke up and immediately opened Twitter (a.k.a. X), where the first thing I saw was Elon Musk reacting positively to a post alleging that actor Tom Hanks is a pedophile.

The co-chair of the independent body that reviews Facebook and Instagram content has said she is "very concerned" about how parent company Meta's decision to ditch fact-checkers will affect minority groups.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, from Meta's oversight board, told the BBC she welcomed aspects of the shake-up, which will see users decide about the accuracy of posts via X-style "community notes".

Is Mark Zuckerberg becoming Elon Musk?

The Meta CEO's replacement of its own fact-checkers with a version of Community Notes – name-checking X's crowdsourced fact-checking feature and adopting the same name – marks one of the most stunning practical results of Donald Trump's second election and a blow to efforts by governments and private disinformation cops to pressure platforms to censor.

How much is X the fiefdom of one man? The question has become increasingly prominent in the post-Christmas fug, thanks to an almighty row over the H-1B visa which has lit up the site for several days.

Ford Motor Company said its X account was “briefly compromised” after the account published several anti-Israel posts on Monday.

While the posts have been deleted, screenshots show the messaging included, “Israel is a terrorist state,” “Free Palestine,” and “ALL EYES ON GAZA.”

“Our X account was briefly compromised and the previous three posts were not authorized or posted by Ford. We are investigating the issue, and apologize for any confusion caused,” the company said in a statement to CBS News.