X, the social media platform, has temporarily banned users from searching for Taylor Swift’s name after fake sexual images of the singer went viral on the internet last week, Reuters reports.
“This is a temporary action out of an abundance of caution, as safety comes first for us, Joe Benaroh, head of business operations at X, said in a statement.
We remind you that Taylor Swift was voted “Person of the Year” by Time magazine in 2023 after breaking all music records with her global tour and becoming the most streamed music artist in the world.
On Friday, White House press secretary Caryn Jean-Pierre described the fake images as “disturbing” and said social media companies have a duty to prevent the spread of such false information.
Jean-Pierre said during a briefing that the lack of a fight against fake images, probably created by artificial intelligence, affects women more.
An image of Swift shared on X was viewed 47 million times before the account was suspended, according to a New York Times report.
Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 and has been criticized for his own controversial posts and for his efforts to overhaul the platform’s content moderation policies. Many advertisers on the platform pulled their spending, fearful of appearing next to damaging posts.
Musk and X CEO Linda Iaccarino formulated a new policy called “free speech, not reach,” which limits the distribution of some posts but refrains from deleting them.