Elon Musk has responded to concerns raised by a number of people, including NBA star Lebron James, regarding the amount of hate speech that has been seen on Twitter following the completion of Musk’s $44 billion buyout of the social media organisation.
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Last week, James responded to a report in the Washington Post that claimed that the use of the ‘N-word’ – a racial slur used to target black and African American people – increased by 500% since the takeover.
The 40-year-old basketball star said he hopes the social media organisation takes hate speech of this kind seriously, claiming “So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech.”
I dont 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. https://t.co/Sy0jvXIBnC
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— LeBron James (@KingJames) October 29, 2022
Musk confirmed that the company will be forming a new content moderation policy which would also include decision-making on whether or not to allow banned accounts such as that of ex-US president Donald Trump back on the website.
On Friday, he doubled down on those claims by reiterating Twitter’s conviction towards content moderation and refuting some of the media reports about hate speech on Twitter. “We have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline *below* our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press,” he said.
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Again, to be crystal clear, Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.
In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline *below* our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022
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According to the Washington Post report, users who were trying to test the limits of Twitter’s content moderation following Musk’s takeover also flooded the application with slurs against the LBTQ+ community and posted sexist comments.
