Iran Press/ America: Elon Musk declared last month that “hate speech impressions” had dramatically fallen on the platform since he took over.
On Friday, two watchdog groups published research that indicated Musk’s claim simply did not hold water, offering one of the clearest pictures to date of the surging tide of hate speech on the platform.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate and Anti-Defamation League both said in reports that the volume of hate speech on Twitter has grown dramatically under Musk’s stewardship.
Specifically, the Center for Countering Digital Hate said the daily use of the n-word under Musk is triple the 2022 average.
And the Anti-Defamation League said in a separate report that its data shows an increase in hate content on the platform.
Both groups expressed alarm with what they are seeing occur on Twitter, one of the most influential communications platforms in the world.
The Anti-Defamation League described the deteriorating state-of-affairs as a “troubling situation” that “will likely get worse, given the reported cuts to Twitter’s content moderation staff.”
Imrad Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said that Musk had sent up the batsignal to every kind of racist, and misogynist that Twitter was open for business, and they have reacted accordingly.”
On Friday afternoon, Musk responded to a New York Times article about the research by tweeting “utterly false,” without specifying what aspect of the reporting he disputed. He then reiterated his claim that “hate speech impressions,” or the number of times a tweet containing hate speech has been viewed, “continue to decline” since his early days of owning the company when the platform saw a spike in hate speech designed to test Musk’s tolerance.
Musk has repeatedly said that he wants to roll back many of the content moderation policies that were in place before he took over the company.
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