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Initial research confirms hate speech skyrocketing on Twitter ... and you ain't seen nothing yet [1]
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Date: 2022-12-02
Musk has disputed the researchers’ findings, calling them “utterly false.” He contends that the number of times such hate speech has been actually viewed (“impressions”) has decreased since his initial takeover. However, since the number of employees actually responsible for moderating hate speech on the platform has dwindled in tandem with Musk’s firings, it’s not clear exactly what information he’s relying on to make this claim.
As reported by Brandy Zadrozny for NBC News, the ban “reversals” thus far number about 12000 in the first week of Musk’s “amnesty, as calculated by Travis Brown, a software developer who keeps track of Twitter users who are suspended.
In that time, Brown has logged an estimated 12,000 reversals of past bans, in a set that, while not a definitive list of reversals, provides a window into the types of users being welcomed back to the platform and leaving experts alarmed. Among the spammers, copyright rule-breakers, adult-content creators and high-profile accounts, Twitter has reopened the door to a growing and emboldened community of trolls, white nationalists, conspiracy theorists and extreme right-wing activists.
For their part, advertisers can now look forward to hawking their wares alongside Holocaust deniers, white supremacist militia groups, and misogynist incels, all of whom will gleefully spew their venom at Blacks, Jews, women and liberals — in fact, at anyone they fancy targeting with doxing, threats, and harassment. As Kara Swisher, a columnist and podcaster for the New York Times, notes, as a longtime Twitter user, she has had to limit comments for the first time, as “the anti-gay stuff alone was heartbreaking.”
And that seems to be the point. Yes, there are ways to navigate around or ignore these scummy people but at some point, as Musk’s cesspool becomes more and more polluted, many will begin to ask themselves whether the benefits of using Twitter really outweigh the negatives.
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