Twitter: Hate speech is on the rise and human control is not enough
It turns to automation
Although Elon Musk had stated on November 23 that the display of hate speech has decreased by 1/3 since the beginning of November, a new survey comes to prove that related posts have increased since Musk took over Twitter.
According to Reuters , Twitter is forced to abandon manual controls and turn to automation to control the platform’s content. So instead of removing specific posts of hate speech, it chooses content availability restrictions. It also aggressively restricts hashtags and search results that contain abusive terms, regardless of the impact on innocent use of those terms.
The biggest change is that the team has orders to move quickly and be as aggressive as possible. – Ella Irwin, VP of Product Trust and Security at Twitter
The recent increase in hate speech comes after Musk announced that he would offer amnesty to banned accounts that have not broken the law. The company has been barraged by questions about its ability and intent to police harmful or illegal content as Elon Musk has fired half of Twitter’s workforce and many others have resigned.
Musk says the team needs to worry less about how their decisions will affect user growth and revenue and make security the company’s number one priority. He emphasizes this every day, many times a day. It has encouraged the team to take more risks, move fast and make the platform secure. – Ella Irwin
The central direction is ” freedom of speech, not freedom of reach “, i.e. freedom of speech but without promoting tweets that violate the company’s policies. In the area of child safety, Twitter takes down sexual abuse content within 30 seconds of being reported. Working with cybersecurity group Ghost Data, it has disabled 44,000 accounts for child safety violations.
Since Musk took over Twitter, tweets containing anti-black language have tripled, while anti-gay tweets have increased by 31%.
