Twitter splash page seen on a digital device in April. New Twitter owner Elon Musk says he is “amnestying” suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will fuel an increase in harassment, hate speech and wrong information.
Gregory Cow/AP
hide captions
switch captions
Gregory Cow/AP
Twitter splash page seen on a digital device in April. New Twitter owner Elon Musk says he is “amnestying” suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will fuel an increase in harassment, hate speech and wrong information.
Gregory Cow/AP
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – New Twitter owner Elon Musk said Thursday that he will “pardon” suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will fuel the growth increased harassment, hate speech and misinformation.
The billionaire’s announcement comes after he asked in a poll posted on his timeline to vote on recovering accounts that don’t “break the law or engage in serious spam.” “. The number of votes in favor was 72%.
“Everyone has spoken. Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted with a Latin phrase that means “voice of the people, voice of God.” Musk used the same Latin phrase after posting a similar poll last weekend before reviving former President Donald Trump’s account, which Twitter banned for encouraging a Capitol uprising. on January 6, 2021.
Trump has said he will not return to Twitter but has not deleted his account.
Such online polls are not scientific and can easily be influenced by bots.
In the month since Musk took over Twitter, groups that monitor the platform for racist, anti-Semitic, and other malicious speech say it’s on the rise in the world’s de facto public square. gender. That includes an increase in racist abuse against World Cup footballers that Twitter is said to have failed to act on.
The rise in harmful content is largely due to the turmoil following Musk’s decision to lay off half of the company’s 7,500-person workforce, fire top executives and then roll out a flurry ultimatums that put hundreds of others out of work.
There are also countless contractors responsible for content moderation. Among those who resigned due to a lack of confidence in Musk’s willingness to keep Twitter from turning into a jumble of out-of-control statements was the head of Twitter’s trust and safety department, Yoel Roth.
Major advertisers have also abandoned the platform.
On October 28, a day after taking control, Musk tweeted that no suspended accounts would be reinstated until Twitter formed a “content moderation board” with views Diversity will consider the case.
On Tuesday, he said he had reneged on that promise because he had agreed to the insistence of “a large coalition of socio-political activist groups” who then “” break the deal” by urging advertisers to at least temporarily stop providing Twitter with business.
Earlier in the day, Twitter restored the personal account of far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was banned in January for violating the platform’s COVID misinformation policy.
Meanwhile, Musk has become increasingly close on Twitter with right-wing figures. Ahead of the US midterm elections this month, he urged “independents” to vote Republican.
A report from the European Union released on Thursday said that Twitter took longer to review hate content and was less likely to remove it this year than it did in 2021. was collected in the spring – before Musk acquired Twitter – as part of an annual review of online platforms’ compliance with the bloc’s code of conduct on misinformation. It found that Twitter rated just over half of the notifications it received for illegal hate speech within 24 hours, down from 82% in 2021.
