Singer’s name yielded error messages Saturday, days after her fans swarmed the social-media platform vowing to ‘protect Taylor Swift’
Social-media platform X blocked searches about Taylor Swift days after explicit, digitally fabricated fakes of the singer began proliferating on the site.
“Posts aren’t loading right now,” an automated message said on Saturday in reply to a search query of the pop star’s name. “Try again later.”
Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X, said Saturday in response to questions about Swift searches: “This is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue.”
Representatives for Swift didn’t respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Graphic fake images of Swift began spreading across X on Wednesday, prompting fans to swarm the platform with real pictures of the “Eras Tour” star. Swifties also pushed X to take stronger steps to delete the phony photos, saying they were flagging accounts spreading the fake images for the company. The slogan “protect Taylor Swift” trended on the site.
By Thursday, a flurry of accounts that were flagged by users for sharing the most viral images were suspended or otherwise restricted, though the fakes were still relatively easy to find on the platform.
X said in an online statement later in the week that it prohibits the sharing of nonconsensual graphic imagery and has a “zero-tolerance policy” for such content. The statement didn’t mention Swift by name.