Twitter pushes back at extremism, N-word accusations

Twitter has pushed back at claims of surging extremism on the platform under new owner Elon Musk, banning controversial figures attempting comebacks and trolls spamming racial slurs.

The platform re-banned white nationalist Nick Fuentes after he made a new account on Saturday, according to The Daily Beast. 

Fuentes is the founder of the America First Foundation, a far-right white supremacist group. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was condemned for speaking at an AFF conference in February.

Musk is attempting to balance his principle of free speech with the expectations of advertisers, tweeting the morning before his $44 billion deal closed that he did not want Twitter to become a “free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences.”

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO announced Friday that he would be forming a content moderation council with “widely diverse viewpoints” to oversee the platform.

Twitter’s head of security also stepped up over the weekend to defend the site from a left-leaning research firm’s claim that it had seen an exponential rise in racial slurs on the site since Musk’s purchase, reports Deadline.

The researchers’ claim that use of the N-word had increased nearly 500% was reshared by NBA star LeBron James, among others.

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

— LeBron James (@KingJames) October 29, 2022

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s Head of Safety & Integrity, on Saturday reiterated that its policies against “hateful conduct” had not changed under new ownership and that a small number of accounts were responsible for the spike in slurs.

“Over the last 48 hours, we’ve seen a small number of accounts post a ton of Tweets that include slurs and other derogatory terms. To give you a sense of scale: More than 50,000 Tweets repeatedly using a particular slur came from just 300 accounts,” Roth wrote, adding that almost all the accounts were “inauthentic” and had been addressed.

Over the last 48 hours, we’ve seen a small number of accounts post a ton of Tweets that include slurs and other derogatory terms. To give you a sense of scale: More than 50,000 Tweets repeatedly using a particular slur came from just 300 accounts.

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) October 30, 2022