In the final days leading up to the US presidential election, Elon Musk's X suspended the official account of a progressive donor-backed voting initiative called SwapYourVote. The volunteer-run website invites third-party voters in battleground states to vote for Kamala Harris, and Democrats in solid-blue states agree to vote for the candidate of their choice. We are trying to match you with a member of staff. The X account was reactivated around 11 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday after being suspended two days ago Sunday after X labeled it as spam.
“This account was caught by one of our automated spam protection features and restored,” an X spokesperson said in an email to TechCrunch on Tuesday. X's Platform Operations and Spam Policy prohibits the use of automation to amplify information.
Vote swapping, also known as joint voting or vote combinations, is a controversial practice dating back to the 2000 US presidential election, when more than 36,000 supporters of Ralph Nader and Al Gore swapped their votes.
So far, nearly 12,000 voters have registered to participate in the 2024 election, according to SwapYourVote. Although this represents a small percentage of the total U.S. electorate, it could have a significant impact in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona, where elections are often decided by a few thousand votes.
It's unclear what the SwapYourVote organizers did to break the policy in the first place.
“We don't yet know what happened,” a SwapYourVote spokesperson said in an email to TechCrunch. “Maybe the account was new and posted a lot, so it got caught in the automated spam filters? I'm still doubtful if this will happen so close to the election,” the person added.
Despite Musk's goal of making X a platform for free speech, content moderation on X has been somewhat inconsistent in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. Clemson University recently discovered a network of 686 AI-powered bots running political influence campaigns on X. Many of them are spreading pro-Trump or pro-Republican propaganda. In September, X suspended the account of a journalist who shared the leak of J.D. Vance's screening documents. It later blocked links to the leaked document, citing its harmful content.
On Tuesday morning, when visiting the @SwapYourVote link to the X account, users received messages that read “Account has been suspended” and “X has suspended an account that violates the X rules.” SwapYourVote's social media accounts on other platforms, including TikTok and Instagram, remained active and accessible as of Tuesday.
Screenshot of @Swapyourvote's X account from Tuesday morning. Image credit: Maxwell Zeff/X