Antisemitic Tweets See 'Major and Sustained Spike' Since Musk Takeover
Since Elon Musk took the helm at Twitter, the number of antisemitic posts and newly created hate speech accounts has risen sharply, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an independent research firm, and CASM Technology.
The organizations "found a major and sustained spike in antisemitic posts on Twitter since the company's takeover by Elon Musk on October 27, 2022," the ISD says.
Researchers found(Opens in a new window) 325,739 English-language, antisemitic tweets posted from June 2022, two months after Musk announced plans to buy Twitter, and February 2023. Those posts escalated after Musk came on board, from a weekly average of 6,204 between June and Oct. 27 to 12,762 between Oct. 27 and Feb. 9, a 105% increase.
The tweets were identified using Beam(Opens in a new window), a machine learning-based hate speech detection tool developed by CASM Technology. The effort is consideredone of the most extensive yet to quantify the impact of Musk's presence as CEO on hate speech, The Washington Post says(Opens in a new window).
The posts referenced a broad spectrum of topics, "ranging from harmful conspiracy theories referring to Jewish control of finance, media and politics; to overt support for antisemitic comments made by public figures such as Kanye West; and the promotion of profoundly racist white supremacy," the ISD says.
Despite Musk's claims that "hate Tweets will be max deboosted," or have their reach curtailed, the study found a "very small decrease in the average levels of engagement or interaction with antisemitic Tweets before and after the takeover." That means there are more antisemitic tweets on the platform, and they get almost as many views by their target audience as before.
The report
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