Twitter amnesty will ‘spur a rise in hate speech’
New Twitter owner Elon Musk said yesterday that he is granting ‘‘amnesty’’ for suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation.
The billionaire’s announcement came after he asked in a poll posted to his timeline to vote on reinstatements for accounts that have not ‘‘broken the law or engaged in egregious spam’’. The yes vote was 72%. ‘‘The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,’’ Musk tweeted using a Latin phrase meaning ‘‘the voice of the people, the voice of God.’’
Musk used the same Latin phrase after posting a similar poll last last weekend before reinstating the account of former President Donald Trump, which Twitter had banned for encouraging the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
Such online polls are anything but scientific and can easily be influenced by bots.
In the month since Musk took over Twitter, groups that monitor the platform for racist, anti-Semitic and other toxic speech say it has been on the rise on the world’s de facto public square. That has included a surge in racist abuse of World Cup soccer players that Twitter is allegedly failing to act on.
The uptick in harmful content is in large part because of the disorder following Musk’s decision to lay off half the company’s 7500-person workforce, fire top executives, and then institute a series of ultimatums that prompted hundreds more to quit. Also let go were an untold number of contractors responsible for content moderation. Among those resigning over a lack of faith in Musk’s willingness to keep Twitter from devolving into a chaos of uncontrolled speech were Twitter’s head of trust and safety Yoel Roth.
Major advertisers have also abandoned the platform.
On October 28, the day after he took control, Musk tweeted that no suspended accounts would be reinstated until Twitter formed a ‘‘content moderation council’’ with diverse viewpoints that would consider the cases.
On Wednesday, he said he was reneging on that promise because he had agreed to at the insistence of ‘‘a large coalition of political-social activists groups’’ who later ‘‘broke the deal’’ by urging that advertisers at least temporarily stop giving Twitter their business.