Elon Musk and Twitter are investigating the increased surge in the use of the N-word, a horrible racial slur, that occurred after he took over the platform. The Chief Twit shared a thread addressing the situation in a response to LeBron James, who said that he didn’t know Elon Musk, but he hoped the Chief Twit would take the increased use of the slur very seriously. “So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech,” James said.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2022
James shared a tweet by Philip Lewis, senior front page editor for The Huffington Post. Lewis shared an article by Yahoo! that cited a report from The Washington Post that said the use of the N-word on Twitter jumped by almost 500% after Elon Musk took over.
The thread Elon Musk shared in response to James was written by Twitter’s Head of Safety & Integrity, Yoel Roth. Roth said that over the last 48 hours, a small number of accounts posted several tweets that used slurs and other derogatory terms.
“More than 50,000 tweets repeatedly using a particular slur came from just 300 accounts.” He added that all of these accounts were inauthentic.
“We’ve taken action to ban the users involved in this trolling campaign and are going to continue working to address this in the days to come to make Twitter safe and welcoming for everyone.
Roth also reminded users that Twitter’s rule prohibits hateful conduct, which includes targeting people with dehumanizing content and slurs. He added that this doesn’t mean Twitter has a list of words that are always banned. “Context matters. For example, our policies are written to protect reclaimed speech.”
You can read Roth’s full thread here.
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