Elon Musk reactivated Donald Trump’s Twitter account last weekend, reversing a ban imposed in January 2021 after his posts were deemed to incite violence at the US Capitol. Trump has not used his account again , but social media researchers have warned for months that his return could bring 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 visible on Twitter under Musk’s leadership.
Researchers from Tufts University’s Digital Planet group tracked hate speech on Twitter before and after Musk took ownership of the company in late October. To do this, they used a data stream provided by the platform known as firehose: a source for every public tweet, like, retweet, and reply shared on the platform. The group has used the same approach in previous studies, including one looking at Twitter toxicity surrounding the US midterm elections.
To study how Musk’s ownership changed Twitter, the researchers searched through tweets posted between March 1 and November 13 of this year, compiling the 20 most popular, as determined by a combination of followers, likes, and retweets. , with keywords that could indicate anti-LGBTQ+, racist, or anti-Semitic intent. They then reviewed the language of those tweets in each of the three categories and tried to judge their true intent.
During the months leading up to Musk’s inauguration, researchers found only one tweet out of three top 20 lists to be truly hateful, in this case against the Jewish people. The others were quoting someone else’s hate comments or using the relevant keywords in a non-hateful way.
In the weeks after Musk took over Twitter, the same analysis found that hateful tweets became much more prominent among the most popular tweets with potentially toxic language. For tweets that used words associated with anti-LGBTQ+ or anti-Semitic posts, seven of the top 20 posts in each category were now hateful. For popular tweets using potentially racist language, one of the top 20 was deemed to be hate speech.
“Twitter’s toxicity has severely increased Musk’s entry into that building,” says Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Business and president of Digital Planet, which conducted the analysis.
These data could add to the challenges Musk faces as he tries to turn around the company, which he has saddled with 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 get more information about any changes to the platform’s content policies. “Advertisers can’t put their money into platforms where comprehensive hate speech and misinformation policies don’t exist or are consistently enforced,” says Lou Paskalis, a longtime advertising executive who previously served as president of MMA Global. , a marketing business group.
The Tufts analysis does not indicate whether the increase in hate speech is due to specific changes Musk made after he acquired Twitter for $44 million last month. Although he initially claimed that company policies would not change, he also laid off thousands of employees and contractors, reducing the resources Twitter could bring to bear to control content. In some countries where the platform is popular, such as Brazil, activists and researchers who track disinformation say there is no longer anyone on Twitter to respond to their warnings and requests.
Source: news.google.com