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Elon Musk’s Twitter is working on removing child sexual abuse material at scale with “no mercy” for abusers

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Elon Musk’s Twitter is working on removing child sexual abuse (CSAM) at scale with “no mercy for those who are involved in these illegal activities.” Andrea Stroppa shared a thread on Twitter with updates on how Twitter has moved from being lenient toward the child abuse problem to tackling it head-on.

Stroppa spearheaded the research team at Ghost Data and found that over 500 accounts openly shared the illegal material over a 20-day period in September. You can view the full report here. In his thread, Stroppa noted that he worked as an independent researcher along Twitter’s Trust and Safety team led by Ms. Ella Irin during the past few weeks. “Twitter achieved some relevant results I want to share with you,” Stroppa tweeted.

Stroppa noted that Twitter updated its mechanism to detect content related to CSAM and that it is faster, more efficient, and more aggressive. “No mercy for those who are involved in these illegal activities.”

Over the past few days, Twitter’s daily suspension rate has almost doubled, which means that the platform is doing a capillary analysis of contents. “It doesn’t matter when illicit content has been published. Twitter will find it and act accordingly.”

Stroppa pointed out that within the past 24 hours, Twitter began increasing its efforts and took down 44,000 suspicious accounts, and over 1,300 of those profiles tried to bypass detection using codewords and text in images to communicate.

He added that Twitter is aware of strategies, keywords, external URLs, and communication methods used by these accounts. “To increase its ability to protect children’s safety, Twitter involved independent and expert third parties.”

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Stroppa added that Twitter is focusing its efforts on networks of Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking users that share CSAM. “Twitter continues to have teams in place dedicated to investigating and taking action on these types of violations daily. Teams are more determined than ever and composed of passionate experts. Furthermore, Twitter simplified the process of users reporting illicit content.”

In a statement to Teslarati, Stroppa said, “If these good things are happening, it’s because Elon really cares about children’s safety. With Elon, we share the idea of the light of consciousness. This light goes through millions of people and improves a bit of the world.”

Eliza Bleu, who has been pushing Twitter to protect children since before Elon Musk purchased the platform, previously emphasized that the content needed to be removed “at scale.” In August, The Verge found that Twitter was unable to detect CSAM at scale.

“Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale,” the Red Team, “to pressure-test the decision to allow adult creators to monetize on the platform by specifically focusing on what it would look like for Twitter to do this safely and responsibly.”

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In her own thread, Eliza Bleu said that she never thought she would be able to tweet this, but “Twitter is currently working on detecting, removing, and reporting child sexual abuse material at scale.”

She added that the issue will take time to clean up, but the rapid changes are “just beautiful to see.”

On Saturday, Bleu told Teslarati, “While the corporate media was fear-mongering and spreading baseless conspiracy theories about Musk’s inability to tackle child sexual exploitation on Twitter with an alleged ‘skeleton crew,’ the platform was actually busy making amazing progress towards protecting sexually exploited children.”

“I’m extremely grateful to see the progress and the changes made under Elon Musk. He has accomplished in a month what the platform could not seem to do over the past decade about the issue of child sexual abuse material. The only time the platform previously made this much progress is when they implemented PhotoDNA.”

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The technology Bleu is referring to was created when Microsoft partnered with Dartmouth College in 2009. PhotoDNA aids organizations in finding and removing known images of child exploitation. Bleu also called out Twitter’s advertisers that left the platform, citing Elon Musk as the reason, yet were silent on Twitter’s slowness and, at times, refusal to remove CSAM from its platform.

Your feedback is welcome. If you have any comments or concerns or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter at @JohnnaCrider1.

Teslarati is now on TikTok. Follow us for interactive news & more. Teslarati is now on TikTok. Follow us for interactive news & more. You can also follow Teslarati on LinkedInTwitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

 

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Johnna Crider is a Baton Rouge writer covering Tesla, Elon Musk, EVs, and clean energy & supports Tesla's mission. Johnna also interviewed Elon Musk and you can listen here

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SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete

Elon Musk confirmed Starmind as SpaceX’s AI satellite constellation name, targeting one million orbital compute nodes.

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Elon Musk confirmed that Starmind will be the official name of SpaceX’s planned AI satellite constellation, following a trademark filing by xAI that surfaced earlier this week. Starmind is what’s being described to the FCC as a constellation of up to one million AI satellites

It’s worth noting that SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite and Starmind are built on the same orbital infrastructure concept but serve entirely different purposes. Starlink is a connectivity network, with satellites receiving and relaying data between points on Earth, and functioning as a high-speed internet backbone in space. The satellites themselves do not process or think, and move information from one place to another, the same function a fiber cable performs underground.

SpaceX just forced Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to team up for the first time in history

Starmind, on the other hand, is something completely different, and tather than moving data, its satellites would compute data through artificial intelligence and directly in orbit using onboard processors powered by large solar arrays. Where a Starlink satellite is essentially a very fast pipe, a Starmind satellite is a server. The practical implication is that Starmind would allow AI models to run inference, process queries, and generate outputs from space, then beam results down to users anywhere on Earth within milliseconds, and without the data ever needing to travel to a terrestrial data center.

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Starship will be able to carry 30 to 50 AI1 satellites per launch, delivering the equivalent of dozens of server racks per flight, with no land acquisition, no power grid approval, and no cooling infrastructure required on the ground.

SpaceX is pursuing this new technology as terrestrial data centers are running into hard limits such as lack of physical space, community opposition, and power and water consumption at a scale that is increasingly difficult to permit. Space has unlimited solar power, natural vacuum cooling, and no zoning boards. Musk said in a June 8 video presentation that he expects space to become the lowest-cost location to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Two AI1 prototypes are scheduled to launch in early 2027, with volume production targeted for the end of that year at a new facility called Gigasat.

The real world applications Starmind enables extend well beyond powering Grok. A constellation of orbiting AI processors could run inference workloads for any paying customer, anywhere on Earth, with latency measured in milliseconds rather than the seconds associated with ground-based cloud routing across continents. Starmind, if it scales as described, would make SpaceX the landlord of AI compute the same way Starlink made it the landlord of satellite internet.

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Tesla pushes back against unfair reporting of accidents

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(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla is pushing back against the unfair reporting of accidents involving its vehicles. Many media outlets were quick to jump to conclusions about a fatal accident involving a Tesla in Katy, Texas, that happened recently.

The driver of the vehicle, which slammed into a brick house and killed a woman inside, stated the car was operating on Autopilot. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Head of AI Ashok Elluswamy both challenged that claim, with Elluswamy revealing last night that the system was overridden by the driver, who pressed the accelerator pedal “all the way to 100%.”

Tesla finally clarifies fatal Texas crash, confirms driver manually overrode acceleration

The car reached a speed of 73 MPH during the crash, Elluswamy detailed, and stated that the accelerator pedal was even pressed after the crash.

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The story has been spread throughout the media with either incomplete or incorrect reporting, with some stories still not updated nearly 24 hours after Musk and Elluswamy posted answers about the crash on X.

The reporting has been a thorn in the side of Tesla for several years. Vehicle accidents involving Teslas are usually reported with the manufacturer’s name in the headline, while other companies are free of criticism when their cars are involved in accidents.

Here’s an example of that:

Many media outlets stated the car was in “self-driving mode” or “Autopilot mode” when the car crashed. The truth is, now that Tesla has chimed in, that the driver had manually overriden the system by pressing the accelerator. Elluswamy commented on the unfair reporting:

“This blatantly irresponsible reporting does more harm to people than they realize.

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Using Tesla self-driving is far safer than manual driving, and this was measured over 10B miles.

Planting such FUD in the minds of general public, who might not know the all the facts, might prevent them from using this technology that makes them safer.”

The damage these headlines do to Tesla and the self-driving car movement is unexplainable. Most people do not realize the safeguards that are in place with Tesla’s self-driving functions; many people who have used it know the car would never travel at that speed in a residential area, not even on the most aggressive “Mad Max” setting.

It is important to remember that Tesla Full Self-Driving is not autonomous, and the company never claimed it was. Drivers are still responsible for paying attention and remaining vigilant. They must be able to take over at all times.

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Tesla gets another layer of gamification with Free Supercharging on the line

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla Supercharging is getting yet another layer of gamification, as the company is rolling out a new competition that could win Free Supercharging miles.

Tesla is ramping up its efforts to make vehicle ownership more engaging through gamification. In June 2026, the company announced the 2026 Free Supercharging Competition, building on the Charging Passport feature introduced the previous year. This initiative turns Supercharging into a competitive, collectible adventure while offering substantial real-world incentives.

The Charging Passport, rolled out late last year, functions like a digital travel log or a year-in-review for Tesla owners. These types of things are used by many platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music, which show listeners what type of taste they had for the year.

Accessed in the Tesla App under the ‘Charging’ section, it displays a map of visited Superchargers, key stats, such as total energy charged (kWh), number of unique sites, total charging sessions, top charging day, and miles added. Owners earn collectible Charging Badges in categories, which include:

  • Charging Milestones – for total energy, consecutive weeks of Supercharging, or unique sites visited
  • Iconic Chargers – for Flagship Locations or stations near famous landmarks
  • Special Events – limited-time badges for specific experiences. These badges appear within 24 hours of qualifying activity and provide a fun, shareable recap of an owner’s Supercharging journeys. Milestone progress resets annually, allowing fresh challenges each year

The 2026 contest elevates this gamification by rewarding top performers with lifetime free Supercharging. All Supercharging sessions from January 1 to December 31, 2026, count toward the competition. To participate, owners must enable “Share Charging Data with Tesla App” in vehicle settings and open the 2026 Charging Passport in the app at least once before January 1, 2027.

Nine winners will be selected — three per region (Americas, Asia-Pacific, and EMEA, with some  countries excluded for regulatory reasons) — one in each of three categories:

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  • Longest Trip: Longest continuous streak of unique Supercharger locations where each new site is visited within 24 hours of the previous session’s start time
  • Most Unique Supercharger Sites Visited: Highest number of distinct locations
  • Most Energy Supercharged: Highest total in kWh charged at Superchargers

A unique site is defined as shown in the Tesla app or vehicle navigation. Repeat visits during a streak are allowed but do not extend the count. Ties are broken by total energy charged. Ineligible participants include vehicles already receiving free Supercharging, commercial-use vehicles (taxi, rideshare, delivery), Tesla employees and their immediate families, and residents of certain excluded countries.

Winners receive free Supercharging on the winning vehicle for as long as they own or lease it.

This contest is part of Tesla’s broader gamification strategy. The Safety Score has long rewarded safe driving habits with a numerical rating that can influence insurance rates or feature access. The referral program incentivizes owners with credits or free Supercharging months for successful referrals.

In-app statistics, streaks, and community features further encourage engagement. Older third-party apps even awarded “mayor” titles for frequenting specific Superchargers.

By combining digital badges, competitive leaderboards, and high-value rewards, Tesla boosts network utilization, gathers usage data, and fosters deeper owner loyalty. The 2026 Free Supercharging Competition invites enthusiasts to plan epic road trips while turning everyday charging into a rewarding pursuit. With the Passport already proving popular, expect heightened activity across the Supercharger network throughout the year.

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