Elon Musk reactivated Donald Trump’s Twitter account last weekend, reversing a ban imposed in January 2021 after his post was deemed provocative Violence at the US Capitol. Trump has not yet started using his account again, but social media researchers have warned for months that his return could cause a wave of division and misinformation on the platform. Even without his controversial presence, a new analysis of millions of tweets shows that hate speech has become more apparent on Twitter under Musk’s leadership.
Researchers at Tufts University digital planet the team tracked hate speech on Twitter before and after Musk took ownership of the company in late October. To do this, they used a stream of data the platform provides, called firehose— feed of every public tweet, like, retweets, and reply shared on the platform. The team has used a similar approach in previous studies, including one on Twitter toxicity around the US midterm elections.
To study how Musk’s ownership has changed Twitter, researchers searched through tweets posted between March 1 and November 13 of this year, collecting the 20 most popular. —identified by a combination of followers, likes, and retweets—with keywords that might indicate objections. LGBTQ+, racist or anti-Semitic intentions. They then looked at the language of those tweets in each of the three categories and tried to gauge their true intentions.
In the months before Musk took over, researchers considered only one tweet out of three of the top 20 lists to be truly hateful, in this case anti-Semitic. Others are quoting other people’s hateful comments or using related keywords in a non-hateful way.
In the weeks after Musk took over Twitter, the same analysis found that hate tweets became much more prominent among the most popular tweets with potentially malicious language. For tweets using words related to anti-LGBTQ+ or anti-Semitic posts, seven of the top 20 posts in each category are now hateful content. For popular tweets that used potentially racist language, one of the top 20 was rated as hate speech.
“Twitter’s toxicity has dramatically increased post-Musk’s entry into that building,” said Bhaskar Chakravortidean of global business at the Fletcher School of Business at Tufts University and president of Digital Planet, which conducts the analysis.
This data could add to the challenges Musk faces as he tries to turn the tide for a company he’s saddled with a lot of debt. Advertisers provide the majority of Twitter’s revenue, but some have said in recent weeks that they will reduce or pause spending until they learn more about any policy changes content of the platform. “Advertisers can’t invest their money in platforms that don’t have a comprehensive and consistently enforced hate speech and disinformation policy,” it said. Lou Paskalisa longtime advertising executive who previously served as president of MMA Global, a marketing trade group.
The Tufts analysis did not say whether the increase in hate speech was due to specific changes made by Musk after he acquired Twitter for $44 million last month. Although he initially stated that company policies would not change, he also laid off thousands of employees and contractors, reducing the resources Twitter could bring to control content. dung. In some countries where the platform is popular, such as Brazil, disinformation activists and researchers say there are No one is on Twitter anymore to respond to their warnings and requests.
