Elon Musk (51) wanted to release the Twitter bird. But since he took over the SMS service, a different wind has been blowing over the portal. Often a very ugly one. In just a few days, the number of racist and discriminatory tweets has skyrocketed. Jewish organizations notice a sharp increase in anti-Jewish news.
And also on the portal, the use of the N-word is increasing alarmingly. So much so that NBA star Lebron James (37) recently commented on it on Twitter. Musk should take a closer look at this development, it’s “scary AF”, in German: “damn worrying”, writes the basketball star. Did Musk Shoot the Bird?
Radicals push boundaries
Musk himself emphasizes that no changes have been made to the site’s moderation since he took over. Still, Twitter seems completely overwhelmed by the situation. On the one hand, this may be due to the mass layoffs. As Twitter has now confirmed, half of its 7,500 employees are currently being laid off. Also in the moderation department, 15 percent of employees will be fired, department manager Yoel Roth writes on Twitter.
Despite the changes, a good 80 percent of the content on the portal was able to be moderated as before, Roth continues. Conversely, this means that almost every fifth post is moderated poorly or not at all. At the same time, Musk has been stressing for weeks that the platform would allow for more diversity of opinions in the future. And people from the far-right camp seem to have taken that as an invitation. With xenophobic and discriminatory posts, they try to figure out how far they can go on Twitter under Musk.
“Hate speech is free speech”
A tweet from Lauren Chen shows how many people on the right want moderation on Twitter to be reduced. “Hate speech is free speech,” writes the political Twitterer, as she describes herself. “In fact, hate speech is the only reason free speech exists.” Those who represent undisputed points of view do not depend on this freedom of expression. After all, more than 400,000 people follow Chen on Twitter.
Tweets from left-wing senders are therefore increasingly flirting with a step away from Twitter. Many of them fear that the SMS service will become a place of hate speech. For the same reason, more and more companies are turning their backs on Twitter and no longer advertising on the portal. Including well-known car manufacturers such as General Motors or VW.
danger to democracy
The freedom of speech Chen advocates could ultimately backfire. There is “the danger that more freedom of expression online leads to less freedom in real life,” writes the NZZ. By this is meant the spread of conspiracy theories, which the Twitter moderators have so far made disappear, at least in part, from the portal.
If such theories can be disseminated unchecked, this could lead to an immediate radicalization of certain population groups – and thus also a threat to democracy. As in the case of the conspiracy theory that Covid-19 was caused by 5G antennas. The result was the burning of cell towers and attempted physical damage to installers working on the towers.