Elon Musk’s “free speech” project is once again under fire—this time for flagging an article critical of Donald Trump.
On Thursday, X users and NPR editors noticed that a link to an NPR story about Trump’s Arlington National Cemetery mishap was being marked as spam on the platform.
When users clicked on the article link, they received an alert reading: “Warning: this link may be unsafe,” followed by the URL to the webpage. This type of warning is typically displayed when the URL leads the user to spam or another kind of malicious link, not a factual news report.
The issue now appears to be resolved, but there doesn’t seem to be any official explanation from X for the warning.
Steve Inskeep, host of Morning Edition and Up First on NPR, flagged the issue, writing: “As of 12:45 p.m. ET, X has blocked this NPR story. Other NPR stories are not blocked, so I’m assuming a good faith mistake.”
That assumption may be a bit too generous. Recently, X has come under fire for limiting access to several political accounts such as KamalaHQ, the official rapid response page for Harris’s campaign, the Uncommitted movement, and the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
This also is not the first feud between Elon Musk and NPR. In 2023, Musk labeled the new organization “state-affiliated media,” a label usually reserved for true propaganda outlets in countries like Russia and China. In response, the outlet formally left the platform.
Meanwhile, Musk continues to back Trump every way he can, including using X to get him greater attention. Perhaps that support may include more overt censorship going forward.
