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Under Elon Musk, Twitter is working harder to thwart hateful conduct.

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Under the new leadership of Elon Musk, Twitter is working harder to thwart hateful conduct. The new Chief Twit took ownership of the platform just before Halloween weekend and has been rapidly implementing new changes, addressing the needs of Twitter’s users, such as wrongful suspensions and addressing a spike in the use of a racial slur that took place as Twitter transitioned to its new leadership.

Jason Calacanis, a host of the All-In podcast, is working with Twitter’s new leadership team to help Elon Musk make the necessary changes to the platform. Calacanis shared a tweet by Twitter’s Head of Safety & Integrity, Yoel Roth, and said that the coordinated, hateful conduct surge was quickly thwarted.

In his thread, Roth gave a very clear update on how Twitter is addressing the surge in hateful conduct. This is a very different Twitter since many users, including myself, have experienced hateful conduct and have seen Twitter’s slow response to it. Roth’s full thread reads as follows:

“Since Saturday, we’ve been focused on addressing the surge in hateful conduct on Twitter. We’ve made measurable progress, removing more than 1500 accounts and reducing impressions on this content to nearly zero. Here’s the latest on our work and what’s next.”

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“Our primary success measure for content moderation is impressions: how many times harmful content is seen by our users. The changes we’ve made have almost entirely eliminated impressions on this content in search and elsewhere across Twitter.”

 

Credit: Yoel Roth/Twitter

“Impressions on this content typically are extremely low, platform-wide. We’re primarily dealing with a focused, short-term trolling campaign. The 1500 accounts we removed don’t correspond with 1500 people; many are repeat bad actors.”

 

Credit: Yoel Roth/Twitter

“Impressions don’t tell the whole story. These issues aren’t new, and the people targeted by hateful conduct aren’t numbers or data points. We’re going to continue investing in policy and technology to make things better.”

“Many of you have said you’ve reported hateful conduct and received notices saying it’s not a violation. Here’s why and what we’re doing to fix it:”

“To try to understand the context behind potentially harmful Tweets, we treat first-person, and bystander reports differently. First-person: This hateful interaction is happening to or targeting me. Bystander: This is happening to someone else.”

“Why? Because bystanders don’t always have full context, we have a higher bar for bystander reports in order to find a violation. As a result, many reports of Tweets that in fact, do violate our policies end up marked as non-violative on first review.”

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“We’re changing how we enforce these policies, but not the policies themselves, to address the gaps here.”

“You’ll hear more from me and our teams in the days to come as we make progress. Talk is cheap; expect the data that proves we’re making meaningful improvements.”

Author’s note: There has been a huge uptick in bots over the weekend. I’ve noticed several bots targeting Teslarati and continuing to spam the replies of Elon Musk. There was even a verified account posting as “Tesla News” promoting a link to a YouTube that promoted a crypto scam. 

 

 

That said, I don’t expect Elon Musk and his new team to solve these problems overnight. Seeing Twitter’s fast response to the hate is very hopeful. I also hope they apply this same speed to child sexual abuse materials. Advocate Eliza Blue has even offered to work with Twitter and Elon Musk for no charge to help spearhead the removal of the content. 

 

As Eliza pointed out to me over the phone, Elon Musk was most likely not aware of the ongoing lawsuits against Twitter regarding child sexual abuse materials. Having this material up, she said, is a liability, and as a supporter of Elon’s, she would like to help Twitter remove it.

“One key benefit of Elon Musk prioritizing the removal of this content besides protecting children is that corporate media and governments won’t be able to weaponize this very real crime against him,” she told me.

Your feedback is essential. If you have any comments or concerns or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter at @JohnnaCrider1.

Teslarati is now on TikTok. Follow us for interactive news & more. Teslarati is now on TikTok. Follow us for interactive news & more. You can also follow Teslarati on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Johnna Crider is a Baton Rouge writer covering Tesla, Elon Musk, EVs, and clean energy & supports Tesla's mission. Johnna also interviewed Elon Musk and you can listen here

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Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next

Tesla confirms its first official Cybercab fleet number as Austin scales fast and Dallas looms.

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Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, the first time the company has put an official number on its active Cybercab fleet. The figure came from the Robotaxi account on X on Saturday, which wrote that one month after launch the service had “scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days.”

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, quoted the post with a line that carried the bigger news. “Two years since the 10/10 Cybercab WeRobot event, the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon,” he wrote. It is the first time Tesla has named the next city for public Cybercab rides.

Tesla opened Cybercab rides to the public in Austin on September 4, as Teslarati reported, a day after an invite only launch event. The ramp since then has been steep. Our September 28 report had the fleet at well over 100 units after availability jumped from 58 to 125 in a single week. On Thursday, Tesla added 150 Cybercabs to the Texas automated vehicle registry, lifting its registered count to 319 from 169. The first seven appeared on the registry on August 31.

RobotaxiTracker, a community site that counts vehicles from sightings and state records, listed 275 vehicles in unsupervised service in Austin on Saturday, 105 of them Cybercabs, which is well below Tesla’s figure. Tracker counts can lag official numbers, though Sawyer Merritt noted that Cybercab wait times in Austin stayed short on Saturday evening even with more than 2,000 fans in town for X Takeover.

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Regulators are watching the rollout. NHTSA opened an audit query into Tesla’s certification that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards, and sworn answers are due October 30. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, which gives the company a natural venue to define its fleet numbers and put a date on Dallas.

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Elon Musk roasts India’s billionaire Mukesh Ambani as Starlink fight heats up

Elon Musk sarcastically calls Mukesh Ambani ‘Prime Minister’ as the Starlink India standoff escalates again.

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Elon Musk escalated his public fight over Starlink’s launch in India on Friday, addressing Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani as “Prime Minister Ambani” in a sarcastic post on X. “Please accept my humble apologies for not realizing that you are the real boss of India,” Musk wrote, before accusing Ambani of “monopolistic exploitation” and asking whether he would “consider allowing Starlink to compete.” In follow up posts, he said Starlink has proven essential during natural disasters and would help parts of India with no internet access.

The post came two days into a fight that Musk sparked up on Wednesday, when he said Starlink was “being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people.” He called it “a crime against the people of India” and left the names out, adding only, “You can guess who they are.” Jio and Airtel together hold more than 80% of India’s telecom market. On Thursday, Musk asked whether Ambani is “the real boss of India” and said Starlink has spent five years complying with “every single law and requirement” of the Indian government.

India’s government has pushed back each time. The Ministry of Communications called the suggestion that its framework is unfair or discriminatory “baseless and misconceived.” Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said Friday that three companies hold satcom licenses: Starlink, Jio Satellite Communications, and Bharti backed Eutelsat OneWeb. Amazon’s Kuiper, now Amazon Leo, is still going through the process. None can launch until regulators finalize satellite spectrum pricing and the Home Ministry signs off on each company’s security compliance. Scindia said the telecom regulator and the Department of Telecommunications are close to a decision on pricing, The Hindu reported. Bharti chairman Sunil Mittal also said OneWeb is still waiting on approvals.

Starlink received its operator license in 2025 after a three year wait, and the space regulator IN-SPACe granted what industry executives called the last approval needed in July. The holdup since then centers on security, particularly concern that foreign operators could bypass Indian gateways.

Musk and Ambani have been on opposite sides of this before. In late 2024, Ambani argued for auctioning satellite spectrum, which Musk criticized as out of step with the rest of the world, and India chose administrative allocation instead. By March 2025, the two sides had signed a deal to sell Starlink devices in Reliance stores, and Starlink secured its telecom license that June. That partner is now also a competitor. Jio is reportedly weighing a constellation of 1,600 to 1,650 satellites costing an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion, while Akash Ambani has told shareholders Jio plans to lease capacity from global providers to move quickly.

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Elon Musk’s surprise addition to the X Takeover lineup has fans talking

Elon Musk will join Saturday’s X Takeover at Giga Texas for a live virtual interview.

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Credit: Tesla Owners Silicon Valley
Credit: Tesla Owners Silicon Valley

Elon Musk will join X Takeover at Giga Texas on Saturday for a live virtual interview, according to Sawyer Merritt, who shared the news late Thursday. Musk will not be on stage in Austin. The conversation is set to stream for free on the @teslaownersSV account on X.

Organizers had kept expectations in check. In a September update, Tesla Owners Silicon Valley said Musk had appeared at the event twice before but was not promising a third appearance, even as fans hoped he would walk the Giga Texas grounds in person. A virtual spot matches 2024, when Musk gave a surprise interview of about an hour to the crowd in San Luis Obispo, as Teslarati reported at the time.

This year’s edition is a first in several ways. It is the first X Takeover held outside California and the first at a Tesla facility, with tickets selling out in eight days. Tesla provides the venue, but the event is produced independently by Tesla Owners Silicon Valley. The main event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT, followed by a drone and light show at 9 p.m. Maye Musk is the keynote speaker, Franz von Holzhausen is set for a virtual keynote, and Nicki Minaj is the special guest. Joe Tegtmeyer, whose drone footage Teslarati used to track the Optimus factory steel frame at Giga Texas, is also on the speaker list.

Musk’s interview topics have not been revealed, but the backdrop is busy. Tesla doubled its Cybercab fleet in Austin in late September, and last week Musk explained why Robotaxi hours only moved from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.. Merritt also reported Thursday that Texas DMV records now show 319 registered Cybercabs, up from 169. NHTSA’s deadline for Tesla’s sworn answers on Cybercab certification is October 30, and Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21.

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Fans who cannot make it to Austin can watch the livestream on X. Musk tends to say more in unscripted settings than he does in prepared remarks, which is the reason this one is worth having open on Saturday.

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