Global Government Affairs

Today, Irish citizen journalist Kirk Loco was acquitted at Bray District Court of a criminal charge under Ireland's "Coco's Law." X is proud to have funded Kirk's defense.

Kirk's alleged offense was a single post on X relaying a teenage girl's account of a migrant man exposing himself to her on a local bus. Kirk was arrested at his home and faced up to two years in prison.

The court found the State had not proved its case. "Grossly offensive" speech is not defined anywhere in the law. Vague laws like this invite abuse.

We will keep standing with users who report on matters of public concern.

People come to X to talk about what's happening in the world, including the upcoming 2026 US midterms. Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and we are proud that X is the global town square where these debates happen. Our job is to keep that conversation authentic, open, and safe.

To ensure these fundamental values are protected during elections, our Safety team uses a variety of detection methods to proactively find and act on activity that breaks the X Rules. These measures build on the safety protections we run 24/7, year-round. X's Authenticity Policy is particularly important to this work. Whether it is spam networks or entities engaged in influence operations, we are actively working to identify and stop coordinated inauthentic behavior that undermines the integrity of our platform.

Through proactive sweeps and investigations, X recently identified and suspended more than 13,000 accounts involved in three suspected foreign influence operations linked to Iran, Russia, and China that targeted US political conversation. The networks used inauthentic accounts to post and amplify content about US politics, targeting candidates and public figures across the political spectrum.

X's Civic Integrity policy addresses misleading content that could affect participation in elections or other civic processes. This includes content that may confuse people about how, when, or where to participate, or that aims to discourage participation. X relies on Community Notes, which let people add context and credible sources, alongside platform moderation. Users can report content under "Civic Integrity" in our in-app reporting flow, and their submission will be routed to request a Community Note, a collaborative way to add helpful context to posts and keep people better informed. Additionally, in critical escalations, X may apply a Civic Integrity label to posts that violate our policy.

We remain committed to X as a global town square where people openly debate topics of public interest and engage with election-related information. Our work continues through Election Day and beyond.

See our Civic Integrity Policy for more information:

help.x.com/en/rules-and-p…

The X Safety team conducted an investigation into suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations:

We identified a bot farm of approximately 200,000 accounts. Within this farm, we found 200 accounts posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy.

These posts contained claims that AI data centers are driving up household electricity prices and straining the grid. Others included AI-generated cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public's expense.

We remain committed to maintaining an open and authentic platform where people debate topics of public interest. We take seriously any attempts to undermine the integrity of the global town square and suspend accounts that violate our Authenticity policy.

X continues to lead in building trust through transparency. Public discourse needs accountable systems that support free expression and informed debate.

That's why we've open-sourced the code that affects a post’s visibility in the For You timeline and built a new tool that shows people labels applied to their account or posts that might limit visibility.

We invite feedback from around the world, and encourage the rest of industry to meet this new standard for platform transparency.

X received an order to restrict access in Türkiye to the official Presidential Candidacy Office account of the now-detained Mayor of Istanbul. Although Türkiye’s laws force us to comply with the order, we are challenging the order in court and, in the spirit of full transparency, are sharing the court order.

This follows the similar order we received and complied with in May 2025 restricting access in Türkiye to a related account belonging to the Mayor. At that time we also issued a public statement via this account, expressed our strong disagreement, challenged the order in court, and shared the court order. Our challenge against this order remains pending before the Constitutional Court, awaiting a decision following our recent legal filings.

These orders require X to block content in Türkiye that is available in the rest of the world. Not complying with these orders can trigger severe sanctions, including throttling of the entire platform in Türkiye. X challenges these orders in court because we believe keeping the platform accessible in Türkiye is vital to supporting freedom of expression and access to information.

X will continue legally challenging requests to remove content in Türkiye and around the world when those requests do not align with principles of free expression, due process, or other local laws.

Istanbul 8th Criminal Judgeship of Peace 2026/6804