Twitter has been awash in hateful tweets since its takeover by Elon Musk. This is the result of several studies by the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Anti-Defamation League, two independent organizations that ensure the safety of content on social networks. The organizations present alarming studies on the increase in racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic slurs. An analysis relayed by the New York Times Friday, December 2.
Racial slurs up 200%
According to research by the two NGOs, insults against African Americans have jumped more than 200% since Musk took over the social network. At the same time, hatred against homosexuals is up 58%. As for anti-Semitic content, the increase is 61% over the same period. This explosion of hateful content would have started shortly after the announcement of the new content moderation policy promoted by the new owner of the platform.
Since his arrival at the controls of the social network, Elon Musk has reinstated many accounts previously suspended for violating the rules of the network. The return of these problematic profiles could partly explain the resurgence of insults of all kinds. In the United States, several members of the ultra-right conspiracy movement QAnon were able to make their comeback on the social network. Some of the offending members even have a blue badge, associated with the Twitter Blue subscription. The visibility of these accounts is therefore increased tenfold.
“Elon Musk sent the Bat Signal to all racists, misogynists and homophobes to let them know Twitter was open for business” and “they reacted accordingly“, analyzes Imran Ahmed, director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
Musk refutes the facts
For Elon Musk, Twitter had to be the social network for the most open freedom of expression possible. In April 2022, the American billionaire claimed to be a “absolutist of freedom of expression.”
The data revealed by the two NGOs did not fail to react to the new boss of Twitter. As usual, Elon Musk defended himself on his favorite social network, explaining, quite naturally, that the studies carried out by independent researchers were “totally“false.
Quickly, the whimsical leader broadcast his own vision of online hatred on the platform, based on an unsourced or even detailed graphic. The latter indicates that the display of hateful content on the network has decreased since the change in the direction of Twitter. “Hate speech views (number of times the tweet was seen) continue to decline, despite a significant increase in the number of users! […] The negativity should [obtenir] and will get less reach than positivity“, assured Musk. And to add: “There are around 500 million tweets a day and billions of views. […] Hate speech represents less than 0.1% of what is seen on Twitter!“
In recent weeks, Twitter has made massive layoffs within its teams, in particular the subcontractors in charge of content moderation. This decrease in the human factor in the process could contribute to the rise in online hate found by researchers. A situation that does not seem close to ending given the new moderation policy. According to Ella Irwin, the company’s new head of trust and safety, quoted by Reuters, in the future, content moderation will be more of an algorithmic process than a human decision. A more than doubtful choice in the current context.