Twitter says deluge of racist slurs after Elon Musk takeover part of a troll campaign

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the richest man in the world, revealed his $44 billion acquisition deal of social media giant Twitter in a tweet on October 27 Thursday. Following the acquisition, key corporate leaders like CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde were fired.

Racist trolls have become rampant after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, and the social network’s hate speech policies are being broken by an “organized” group of people, as claimed by the organization. 

Also Read | Elon Musk’s Twitter may make users pay for blue tick

According to the Princeton-based Network Contagion Research Institute, which monitors “cyber-social threats,” the use of the N-word on Twitter jumped by about 500% in 12 hours compared to the prior average after Musk closed on the $44 billion deal. 

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, posted a thread on Saturday night in response to the rise in N-word usage, calling the abusive behavior a “trolling campaign.”

According to Roth, Twitter has experienced “a small number of accounts post a ton of tweets that include slurs and other discriminatory phrases” over the preceding 48 hours.

Also Read | Elon Musk takes over Twitter and faces social media crash course

He said that just 300 accounts, almost all of which are “inauthentic,” were responsible for more than 50,000 tweets that frequently used “a particular slur” and also had a clear reference to the N-word. 

Roth further said, “Twitter’s policies haven’t changed. Hateful conduct has no place here. And we’re taking steps to put a stop to an organized effort to make people think we have”. 

LeBron James, the basketball legend, tweeted on Saturday that he was concerned about the rise in hate speech on Twitter. He said, “I don’t know Elon Musk and, tbh, I could care less who owns Twitter. But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously because this is scary AF. So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech”. 

Musk referred James to Roth’s post on the matter. According to Roth, Twitter does not have a “list of words that are always forbidden. Context is crucial”. Roth wrote, “our policies are written to protect reclaimed speech.” Twitter’s rules prohibit “hateful conduct,” which includes “targeting people with dehumanizing content and slurs”.