Skip to main content

Hate speech is soaring on Twitter under Elon Musk, report finds

Hate speech is soaring on Twitter under Elon Musk, report finds

/

An influx of hateful content flooded Twitter immediately after Musk took over. A new report finds that despite Musk’s claims, hate speech is up and getting more traction.

Share this story

Twitter bird logo in white, over a red and black background.
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Elon Musk claimed last week that “hate speech impressions” on Twitter were down by one-third since he took over the company.

But the total amount of hate speech on the platform has risen during that same time period, according to research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

An average of 1,282 tweets with slurs against Black people appeared daily on Twitter before Musk took over; that number jumped to 3,876 after he bought the company. During the week of Musk’s tweet, it increased even further to 4,650 tweets a day on average.

Slurs against transgender people increased 62 percent since Musk bought Twitter

Slurs against transgender people increased 62 percent since Musk bought Twitter, to 5,117 tweets a day on average, the report found. The data was gathered using Brandwatch, a social media analytics tool, and include tweets from around the world in English.

In a tweet in mid-November, Musk said hateful tweets would be “max deboosted & demonetized” so that users wouldn’t see the content unless they went looking for it. But even if views are down, the CCDH report found engagement on hate speech is up since Musk took over the company. The average number of likes, replies, and retweets on posts with slurs was 13.3 in the weeks leading up to Musk’s Twitter 2.0. Since the takeover, average engagements on hateful content has jumped to 49.5, according to the report.

Do you work at Twitter or have information you’d like to share? I’d love to hear about your experience. Contact me at mia@theverge.com and I’ll share my Signal.

“Elon Musk sent up the batsignal to every kind of racist, misogynist and homophobe that Twitter was open for business, and they have reacted accordingly,” Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, said in an email.

Musk described the findings as “utterly false” in a tweet Friday afternoon responding to a New York Times story on the study. Musk also promised to publish data weekly, and maintained that impressions on hate speech — the number of times content has been seen — is declining.

Since taking the helm of Twitter in late October, Musk’s changes to the platform have been erratic and reactive. Musk has gutted the trust and safety teams responsible for moderation, even amid concerns from civil rights advocates and groups over how hateful content could flourish on Twitter. He’s also pitched (and abandoned) a “content moderation council,” eventually following it up with Twitter polls asking users to weigh in on whether banned accounts should be given “general amnesty.” Musk has also tweeted that Donald Trump is welcome to return to the platform after being suspended for inciting violence.

At least some hateful content is being removed: on Thursday, Kanye West, now known as Ye, was suspended from Twitter for sharing an image of a swastika in a Star of David. Musk tweeted that the suspension was for violating rules around “incitement to violence.”

The Verge reached out to Twitter for comment and will update if the company responds. Musk effectively dismantled the press department through layoffs in November.

Update December 2nd 2:22PM ET: Updated to include Musk’s response to the study.

Today’s Storystream

Feed refreshed Dec 2 • Turn the dial

J
Twitter
Meta is going to let players make their own levels in its VR battle royale game.

Population: One, which Meta bought last year, is getting a new “sandbox” mode that lets players build their own worlds. While you might think that a sandbox mode steps on the toes of Meta’s own Roblox-y Horizon Worlds, this to me looks more like Fortnite’s Creative mode.

The new sandbox mode launches on December 14th in early access. You can get on the waitlist on the game’s website.


J
External Link
What do you do for a living, “What do you do for a living” guy?

The LA Times caught up with Daniel Mac, TikTok’s legendary interviewer of people with extremely expensive cars. I’ve always wondered how staged the videos are, but it turns out, there’s just a lot of standing around and waiting.

A number of elements have to break in his favor: An expensive vehicle is essential, but it also helps if it is in the rightmost lane with the windows down. Timing is tricky — if the stoplight on Rodeo is green, there isn’t enough time for an ambush. Auto owners who refuse to say what they do lead to higher engagement in the comments section, and “if there’s a female in the car,” Macdonald says, “it’s gonna go 10 times more viral.”


E
External Link
“I flew past the bright red flags at his company.”

I loved this chewy piece by Zeke Faux at Bloomberg about Sam Bankman-Fried, crime, and media manipulation. Faux goes into detail about what he missed, what he noticed, and what he thinks happened at FTX. Here’s a taste:

Two people with knowledge of the matter told me that Ellison, by then the sole head of Alameda, had told her side of the story to her staff amid the crisis. Ellison said that she, Bankman-Fried and his two top lieutenants—Gary Wang and Nishad Singh—had discussed the shortfall. Instead of admitting Alameda’s failure, they decided to use FTX customer funds to cover it, according to the people. If that’s true, all four executives would’ve knowingly committed fraud.


N
Twitter
Here I am talking about Disney’s org chart on CNBC.

Operational Bob is OUT, Visionary BOB is IN.


J
Twitter
The Pantone color of the year is...Viva Magenta!

Every year Pantone unveils a trending color to represent the year ahead, and for 2023, that’s PANTONE 18-1750 which is otherwise known as “Viva Magenta.”

Some gadgets, like the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion, are already rocking the purple-red hue — perhaps Motorola has paid for a Pantone Connect subscription following the color system’s spat with Adobe.


N
Twitter
A perfect out-of-context tweet.


M
External Link
A volcanic eruption in Hawaii is disrupting a vital climate record.

Mauna Loa is home to one of the most important climate observatories in the world. It’s also an active volcano. This week, an eruption cut power to the observatory, disrupting one of the best records of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, called the Keeling Curve. Now, researchers are scrambling to get it up and running again.


R
Quote
Green light.

Kanye’s tweets, Elon’s semi trucks, and lots of ego to go around... just another day on the Internet.

In other stories that aren’t about those people that you may have missed:

Mike Flanagan (Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club) is jumping from Netflix to Amazon.

The Mandalorian returns on March 1st.

There’s a trailer for the Beast Wars Transformers movie.

The new OpenAI bot is chatty, but naive.

There are more cheap laptops coming with AMD’s gaming-friendly RDNA2 tech.


A
External Link
One of the largest AI language models has taught itself the mechanics of werewolf porn.

GPT-3 regularly scrapes the internet to teach itself language, but one redditor suspected it was teaching itself using AO3’s over 10 million works of fanfiction. And it turns out that yup, GPT-3 is training itself using fanfiction and now knows the mechanics of the “omegaverse” werewolf porn trope better than most humans. Fanfic authors are already locking their works down to avoid further mining.


J
External Link
That’s one way to test Apple’s satellite rescue feature.

The iPhone 14’s Emergency SOS via satellite feature has officially helped at least one person in danger.

Alaska’s Department of Public Safety reports that a man “traveling via snowmachine” was successfully rescued after “becoming stranded” and activating the feature. Apple’s Emergency Response Center provided volunteer searchers with his GPS coordinates. So yeah, it works!


J
External Link
Did you know 37 percent of the world’s population have never used the internet?

It’s one of the many amazing tidbits in the annual list of 52 facts compiled by consultant and former journalist Tom Whitwell. Each year’s list is a doozy and 2022 is no exception. Another favorite: “In 1739, there were three times more coffee shops per person in London than there are today.”


52 things I learned in 2022

[Medium - Tom Whitwell]

E
External Link
Watch out! The VCs are in their feelings.

We’ve talked a couple times about how money is just feelings, and here’s venture capitalist Charles Hudson, confirming it:

I see three dominant emotions on the capital provider side of the table right now.

Loss: Loss is one of the dominant emotions people are feeling right now – loss of paper gains, loss of expected carried interest, and a loss of optimism about the future. 

Anger: Anger about having agreed to terms and prices that no longer make sense and maybe never made sense.

Regret: Regret about M&A deals that people should have taken, secondary transactions that should have been pursued, public company shares that should have been sold or distributed.

Look out below!


M
Youtube
Let’s watch Tesla deliver some electric trucks.

Tesla’s Semi Delivery event is due to start at the top of the hour, where we’ll probably get some information on the company’s big rig. Who know what else will happen, given that it’s an Elon company, so so if you want to tune in you can do so here.


S
Youtube
Pssst Verizon users... you might have a great deal on a killer gamepad waiting in your account.

Even if you don’t have an Xbox, the Bluetooth + USB-C equipped Xbox Elite 2 Core is one of the most comfortable, capable pads you can buy. If you’ve got the magic coupon in your Verizon Up— I didn’t — you can snag it for half-off at $64.99.

You can use our affiliate link if you want to tip us for the find.


E
External Link
Excuse me, did you know Sam Bankman-Fried?

Look man, I’m not a legal expert or anything, but there’s a long and rich history of creative racketeering cases being brought in New York, and uh:

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York recently sent out a slew of requests, asking recipients to voluntarily hand over information on a list of FTX employees and associates, according to people familiar with the case.

They’re asking nicely now, but there is no doubt in my mind they’ll be back with subpoenas if they don’t get the cooperation they’re looking for. Anyway, time to talk to your lawyer!