X suspends 13,000 influence accounts ahead of US midterms

A busy week for X

In the third week before the US midterm elections, X made news on three fronts: election security, advertising and pricing. The company said it had suspended more than 13,000 accounts tied to suspected foreign influence operations. Elon Musk, its owner, announced a loosely defined "esthetic standard" for ads. And the corporate group that now owns X folded the platform's premium tier into a single subscription with Grok and Cursor. Each of these can be read as routine. Taken together, they show a platform that has stopped being run as a standalone social network and is now a piece of a larger AI and aerospace company. It is also being asked to referee an election in which its owner is the biggest single spender.

The takedown: 13,000 accounts and three countries

X said it had removed more than 13,000 accounts linked to three suspected influence operations connected to Iran, Russia and China, all aimed at US political debate.1 The announcement came Wednesday, alongside a list of the platform's safeguards for the November 3 midterms.11 According to the company, the networks used fake accounts to post and boost political content about candidates and public figures "across the political spectrum." X said it found them through proactive sweeps under its rules on spam and coordinated inauthentic behaviour.11

X also restated its election rules. It bans misleading claims about how, when or where to vote, efforts to suppress turnout, and voter intimidation, including calls for violence near polling places.11 Users can flag election posts through a "civic integrity" reporting option, which asks for a Community Note to add context. In urgent cases, X says it may label posts that break the rules.11

The history helps put the size of this in context. In 2021, when the company was still Twitter, it announced the suspension of 238 accounts believed to be operating from Iran.1 Account counts are a rough measure, but 13,000 is a big jump. Either the operations have grown, X's detection has improved, or the company wants to be seen acting at scale before a high-stakes vote. The timing also matches a wider industry pattern: about a week earlier, OpenAI said it had shut down two Russian and Iranian operations that used ChatGPT to create fake journalist personas and run a covert anti-Ukraine "think-tank."1

Notably, X's enforcement relies heavily on Community Notes rather than removing posts. That matches the company's "global town square" message, which its government affairs team repeated in the announcement.11 It also leans on a system Musk himself has questioned. In February 2025 he said Community Notes was "increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media," after notes contradicted some of his own claims.4

The owner in the middle of the race

This is where the coverage splits most sharply. X describes itself as a neutral guardian of an authentic conversation. Over the same days, the Guardian reported that Musk had become the largest political donor of the 2026 midterm cycle, spending about $366m, mostly on Republican candidates and right-wing causes.18 More than $276m of that has come since July. His largest single donation, $158m, went to the Senate Leadership Fund, which is working to keep the Senate in Republican hands.18 The same report notes that Musk has long used X to go after political opponents and spread election misinformation. It says he recently reposted an America PAC video attacking Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, calling it "madness."18

The two stories don't strictly contradict each other. Taking down foreign bot networks and the owner campaigning personally are different activities. Still, the tension matters. One computational study published in November 2024 found a "structural break" that appeared to favor Republican-leaning accounts. It began around July 13, 2024, the date Musk endorsed Donald Trump.4 In my reading, the foreign-influence takedown is real and probably useful, but it does not settle the bigger question about X's role in the election. On X, the most powerful domestic voice is the man who owns the platform.

Ads: "ugly, shrill, strident" no longer welcome

On Friday, Musk posted that all advertising on X would now face a "reasonable esthetic standard." He said advertisers whose ads are ugly, shrill, strident, or overstate their product's claims would be barred.14 It extends his June 2025 ban on hashtags in ads, which he also called an aesthetic problem.14 He gave no enforcement criteria, no start date, and no incident that prompted the change.14

The vagueness is the real news. A rule built on taste rather than clear standards gives X wide discretion to turn away advertisers. That can protect the user experience, but it can also be applied unevenly. The timing is unusual for a company still rebuilding ad revenue. One analysis says most top advertisers have come back, but revenue has not fully returned to pre-takeover levels.12 The same outlet reports a plan to offer returning advertisers up to $200,000 in extra value. Neither of the other reports here confirms that figure.12 Meanwhile, X keeps adding ad products: X Lift, an AI ad-creation tool, launched in October.2 In July it added lead-generation ads and "Mention Boost," which lets brands promote organic customer posts.2 The strategy looks like this: make ads cheaper to produce with AI, then gatekeep how they look. X wants volume and polish at once.

One subscription to bundle them all

The structural change with the biggest long-term impact may be pricing. SpaceX Super Intelligence launched "The X Subscription," which combines Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor and X Premium into one plan.13 The launch followed Musk's October 4 announcement that SpaceXAI would rename itself SpaceXSI.13 Another report says the bundle comes in four tiers aimed at individuals, developers, professionals and heavy AI users.15 Earlier in October, X began letting Premium subscribers link their Grok accounts, an early step toward the merger.2

The corporate chart explains the bundle. Musk sold X to xAI in March 2025 in an all-stock deal that valued X at $33 billion. In 2026, SpaceX acquired xAI, which makes X an indirect subsidiary of a publicly traded aerospace company.5 Seen that way, X Premium stops being a social network's paywall and becomes the consumer entry point to an AI product line. One commentary says the shift is moving resources away from content moderation and toward supplying real-time data for AI training.12 That is interpretation, not a disclosed strategy. But it fits what has visibly happened: Grok buttons under posts, Grok image editing, and AI-written Community Notes have all spread across the product over the past year.2

Is X healthy? Two very different stories

Assessments of the platform's condition vary a lot. One account draws on commentary from Daring Fireball's John Gruber. It argues that X has found its footing: discussion there, especially about AI, is livelier than on Threads, Bluesky or Mastodon; the feed is less focused on Musk; and many valuable accounts post only on X.12 It cites an example: Merriam-Webster published 45 posts on X in October against 10 on Bluesky.12 Other reporting describes a platform whose owner is a polarizing political force, with credibility issues tied to his actions.18 Britannica's summary says it is still debated whether X is a lightly moderated "town square" or a reliable information source. It adds that rivals have struggled to match Twitter's old influence.5

Reliability is a concern too. Users reported loading failures, blank screens, posting errors and broken search on October 14, after a 32-minute disruption on October 7.3 On the Android app, X Corp. shipped several builds in the first half of October, each listed only as bug fixes and improvements.9

X also remains Musk's main broadcast channel for his other companies, which helps keep it at the center of attention. He used it to post video of Tesla's redesigned Roadster flipping and briefly flying at a SpaceX site in Texas, with the caption "Turns out the future does have flying cars."17 The clip set off a wave of memes across the platform.19

The bottom line

In my reading, this week's news supports neither the "X is recovering" story nor the "X is collapsing" story. X is becoming something else: the social and distribution layer of Musk's SpaceX-xAI group. Its subscription now sells AI tools, its ad business is being remade with AI, and its integrity work is being handed to crowdsourced and AI-assisted notes. The 13,000-account takedown shows that the company can still run traditional trust-and-safety operations when it chooses to. The open question for November is whether a platform owned by the cycle's biggest donor can persuade users that it is protecting the election conversation rather than tilting it.