Friday, October 4

Studies Document Growth of Hate Speech on Twitter in the Musk Era

Elon Musk en Twitter.
Elon Musk on Twitter.

Photo: Scott Olson / Getty Images

By: The Opinion Updated 07 Dec 2022, 02 : 54 pm EST

Twitter has been remained at the center of controversy since it was acquired by billionaire Elon Muk and today some reports say that hate speech has increased on the social network after it was sold.

The month past Elon Musk said that the “impressions of hate speech” they had declined dramatically on the platform since he took command; However, today two online surveillance groups maintain the opposite.

Today The Center to Counter Digital Hate (CCDH) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) each published research indicating that Musk’s claim simply did not hold up, offering one of the clearest images to date of the rising tide of hate speech on the platform.

The data found

The CCDH assures that only last week it was able to document an important growth in the presence of hate speech on Twitter, despite Musk’s assertions that it had declined .

“CCHR’s analysis of data from the social media analytics tool Brandwatch shows that the week in question there was an increase in the amount of hate language being tweeted,” the post read.

This study found that daily use of the n-word under Musk is triple the average of 1200 and the use of slurs against gay men and trans people has increased by 60% and 54%, respectively.

“The figures show that despite claims by Twitter’s Head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, that the platform had succeeded in reducing the number of times hate speech was seen on Twitter’s search and trending page, the actual volume of hate tweets has skyrocketed”, concludes the internet surveillance group.

part, ADL publishes that in the In recent weeks, Twitter has taken several measures that have given power to extremists s. The main ones: the decision to sell the blue “verified” mark and to grant “amnesty” to suspended Twitter accounts, the document reads.

Since Elon Musk took over a few weeks ago, @Twitter has pursued several measures that have enabled a growing extremist presence on the platform, offering these figures a veneer of legitimacy and a microphone to spread their hate. Read more here: https://t.co/9CCKVswVd2— ADL (@ADL) December 2, 1200

ADL notes that it has seen both an increase in anti-Semitic content on the platform and a declining moderation of anti-Semitic posts, a worrying situation that is likely to get worse given the cuts in Twitter’s content moderation staff.

“These changes are already affecting the proliferation of hate in Twitter, and the return of extremists of all stripes to the platform has the potential to supercharge the spread of extremist content and disinformation. This can also lead to an increase in user harassment,” the document concludes.

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