The use of hate speech on Twitter has increased dramatically since Elon Musk took over, according to a new study.
Mr. Musk completed a $44 billion acquisition of the social networking platform at the end of October, quickly firing about half of the company’s 8,000 workers.
Although the head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, said at the time that frontline moderators experienced “least impact”, last week – after resigning – Mr. says Twitter is no safer under Mr. Musk.
On Friday, the US-based Center against Digital Hate (CCDH) released a report looking at the rise of hate language on the platform.
Among its findings:
• Daily use of the word “n****r” has tripled since Mr. Musk took over, compared to the average seen in 2022
• Daily use of “c***s” increased by 33% in the same time period
• Daily “f****t” usage increased by 58%
• Daily use of “tr***y” increased by 62%
The news comes just days after Mr Musk congratulated the team on Twitter, saying that “hate speech impressions” had “fallen by a third from pre-spike levels”.
He also announced on November 18 that Twitter’s new policy is “freedom of speech, but not freedom of access”, adding: “Negative/hate tweets will be minimized and deleted. monetization is turned off, so there is no advertising or other revenue for Twitter.
“You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically search for it, which is no different from the rest of the Internet.”
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But the CCDH report shows that average engagement with tweets containing slurs has also skyrocketed.
In the two weeks before Mr Musk took over, the average number of replies, retweets and likes for tweets using “n****r”, “tr***y” or “f****” t” was 13.3 but then after the takeover it jumped to 49.5 – a 272% increase.
As a case study, the study looked at anti-LGBTQ+ tweets following the Colorado Springs shooting, where five people were killed at an LGBTQ nightclub on November 19.
They focused on the hateful “grooming” rhetoric, which they said was viewed in tweets tens of millions of times after the shooting.
In the three months before Mr. Musk took over Twitter, the 10 accounts primarily responsible for that rhetoric amassed 222,709 followers per month between them, averaging over three months.
In the month after Musk took over, they had a total of 944,205 followers – an increase of more than 320%.
This is not the first time concerns have been raised about how Mr Musk’s leadership is changing Twitter.
The restore the platform’s COVID misinformation policy is expected to bring more freedom to anti-vaxxers, while his announcement of The “general amnesty” will allow the return of people who were previously banned for violating Twitter’s rules.
Among them are white supremacists, misogynists and far-right conspiracy theorists.
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On Friday, Mr Musk appeared to be addressing the CCDH report as he tweeted: “Hate speech impressions – the number of times a tweet is viewed – continues to decline, despite a significant increase in users. “
He promised that the data would be released weekly, adding: “Freedom of speech does not mean free access.
“Negative should and will be less approachable than positivity.
“There are about 500 million tweets a day and billions of impressions, so hate speech impressions are 0.1% less than what’s seen on Twitter.”
