According to a new study published in PLOS ONE, hate speech on X (formerly known as Twitter) increased 50% for at least eight months after Elon Musk purchased the platform. The study focused on how many racist, homophobic and transphobic slurs users used on the platform and how there was a spread in hate speech on the platform which used to help friends and families stay in touch and can give some rise to offline hate crimes now as well. Elon Musk officially bought Twitter on October 27, 2022 for $44 billion and he promised the users that he will reduce hate speech, bots and other inauthentic content from the platform.
But Musk made a lot of changes to the platform in order to reduce content moderation and also fired the full time workforce of the company in November 2022. Some outsourced content moderators tracking abuse on the platform were also fired even though many researchers have shown that there is less hate speech on platforms which have high levels of content moderation. In the same month, Elon Musk disbanded X's Trust and Safety Council, a volunteer group of human rights leaders and academics created in 2016 to address hate speech and other issues on the platform.
The study analyzed 4.7 million English language posts on X during the ten months when Elon was about to buy the platform and eight months after he bought it. The study measured clear hate speech with tweets using toxic language or attacking identity groups only. The study also analyzed how much users engaged with these tweets by liking them but the researchers’ access to X’s data was cut off because of policy change by the platform and the payment access was unaffordable.
But overall, the results of the study showed that there was an increase in average numbers of posts containing hate speech after Musk took over X. Before Elon Musk bought X, the average number of hate tweets per week was 2179 but jumped to 3246 tweets per week after Musk bought the platform. The highest increase was seen in transphobic slurs, with an increase of 115 tweets per week about it to 418. There was also a 70% increase in user engagement on tweets containing hate speech under Musk’s watch. The research says that either the hate speech doesn't get taken down or the algorithm promotes hate speech unintentionally, and that's why the user engagement has gotten higher.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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But Musk made a lot of changes to the platform in order to reduce content moderation and also fired the full time workforce of the company in November 2022. Some outsourced content moderators tracking abuse on the platform were also fired even though many researchers have shown that there is less hate speech on platforms which have high levels of content moderation. In the same month, Elon Musk disbanded X's Trust and Safety Council, a volunteer group of human rights leaders and academics created in 2016 to address hate speech and other issues on the platform.
The study analyzed 4.7 million English language posts on X during the ten months when Elon was about to buy the platform and eight months after he bought it. The study measured clear hate speech with tweets using toxic language or attacking identity groups only. The study also analyzed how much users engaged with these tweets by liking them but the researchers’ access to X’s data was cut off because of policy change by the platform and the payment access was unaffordable.
But overall, the results of the study showed that there was an increase in average numbers of posts containing hate speech after Musk took over X. Before Elon Musk bought X, the average number of hate tweets per week was 2179 but jumped to 3246 tweets per week after Musk bought the platform. The highest increase was seen in transphobic slurs, with an increase of 115 tweets per week about it to 418. There was also a 70% increase in user engagement on tweets containing hate speech under Musk’s watch. The research says that either the hate speech doesn't get taken down or the algorithm promotes hate speech unintentionally, and that's why the user engagement has gotten higher.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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