Elon Musk Refutes Claims That Hate Speech on Twitter is on the Rise Since Takeover

An NGO concerned with overseeing hate speech online claims that Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter gave rise to the proliferation of more offensive content. Their numbers show racially charged tweets and other unsavory remarks have soared on the platform.

However, the new Chief Twit rejected these claims and deemed them "utterly false."

Continuous Decline

"Hate speech impressions (# of times tweet was viewed) continue to decline, despite significant user growth! @TwitterSafetywill publish data weekly. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach. Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity. " Musk wrote in a tweet.

He further claimed that: "There are about 500M tweets per day & billions of impressions, so hate speech impressions are <0.1% of what's seen on Twitter!"

As reported first by The New York Times, research from the Centre for Countering Digital (CCDH) claims that hate speech on the app has increased ever since Musk took his Twitter reign.

The NGO said that, on average, 1,282 tweets per day are racist toward the Black community, and 5,117 tweets per day are hateful toward transgender people.

The group found that the number of hate speech tweets jumped to 3,876 after Musk completed the acquisition deal. They also noticed that ever since then, hateful tweets averaged around 4,650 per day.

Additionally, CCDH observed that the typical number of likes and comments to these hateful tweets increased from 13.3 to 49.5.

Musk's Deal with Free Speech

Online safety advocates are not particularly keen on Musk's acquisition of the bird app. In the past, activist groups raised concerns that the billionaire's free-speech absolutist stance would give a platform for "extremists."

Several celebrities have also quit the platform after many workers fled from the company's new leadership. One of those is the former Head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, who recently said in an interview that Twitter is unsafe under Musk.

But Musk previously stated that Twitter's commitment to content moderation would remain unchanged, even though he recently rolled back the app's COVID-19 misinformation policy.

Musk has also declared a general amnesty for public figures who have been banned from the platform for supposedly violating its guidelines against hate speech and false information.

But even before this announcement, Musk has already reinstated Donald Trump after facing a ban for allegedly "inciting violence" during the Capital Riots.

On Friday, Dec. 2, Musk pulled a rather unexpected move when he suspended Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, weeks after being reinstated to the bird app.

Ye retweeted a snippet from an interview in which he claimed to admire both Nazis and Jews. In a subsequent tweet, he also shared an image with the swastika symbol.

This ultimately prompted Musk to suspend the rapper on Twitter once again.

"I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended," the Chief Twit wrote in a tweet on Friday.