On Monday, Dec. 12, Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, a global group of civil rights advocates, academics and experts who had advised the company since 2016.At the same time, Musk welcomed the return of previously banned high-profile extremists, such as this white nationalist patrick caseyOther recovered accounts include Meninist, a “men’s rights” account with more than a million followers, according to data compiled by researcher Travis Brown; cardiologist Peter McCullough ( Peter McCullough won huge audiences for advocating a discredited covid-19 cure and opposing vaccinations; Tim Gionet, a far-right media personality, live-streamed his participation in the Jan. 6 U.S. Circumstances of the Capitol attack.
Musk’s zeal for laying off workers, cutting costs and undermining Twitter’s security infrastructure has seen advertisers leave. At one point, the company reportedly lost half of its business from its top 100 advertisers, and its weekly U.S. ad revenue fell short of expectations by 80%. Musk’s behavior now presents a conundrum for the remaining brands.company owned Stop policy on covid-19 misinformation. As people who liked Musk’s vision for Twitter reposted, others found it harder to justify their presence on the site, announce a hiatus or announce their migration elsewhere. It is estimated that Twitter may have lost 1 million users in just a few days after Musk took over. Others are giving up on tweeting, even if they haven’t deleted their accounts. Some of them are high profile: Elton John quit Twitter on December 9th, Cite the site’s policy change on misinformation.
MIT Technology Review analyzed Hoaxy, a tool created at Indiana University to show how information spreads on Twitter by looking at keyword frequency and interactions between individual accounts. The results hinted at a new role for Musk in this network: effectively a far-right lobby monitor.
The tool visually draws an interaction graph that shows connections between various Twitter accounts on a particular keyword or hashtag, and indicates whether the account expanded the search term to others or was mentioned by an account that was doing so. Accounts that are more actively participating in the conversation are shown as nodes.
From Friday, December 9th through Sunday, December 11th afternoon, we are running the analysis. (We also ran a second lookup on Wednesday, Dec. 14, which showed similar results.) Musk himself didn’t tweet the word — according to a report from GLAAD and Media Matters, during his tenure. During this period, the frequency and reach of the word have greatly increased. Instead, he was repeatedly tagged into the conversation by others using it.
At times, these users were clearly seeking attention and amplification from Twitter owners, and implicitly identified the recipient of the slur as a potential harassment target. At other times, Musk has been labeled in conversations in which slurs are used to attack those who directly oppose him on Twitter —including company co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey[1] [2] , who tweeted at musk last week Rebutting his claims that the company “refused to take action on child exploitation for years!” Musk regularly interacts with a number of power users and fans, including conservative meme accounts and far-right figures like Ian Miles Cheong and Andy Ngo.
Increasingly, Musk isn’t just enabling these conversations—he’s joining them. “My pronoun is indict/Fauci,” he tweeted over the weekend.When astronaut Scott Kelly publicly begged him not to “mock and incite hatred against members who were already marginalized and at risk of violence” #LGBTQ+ Community,” Musk replied, “imposing your pronouns when people don’t ask, and implicitly excluding those who don’t ask, isn’t nice or kind to anyone. “