As the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk has vowed to champion free speech without turning the social media platform into a "hellscape." Just hours into his tenure at the helm, however, the hellscape appeared to be winning out. The Washington Post and Vice report on the racist, antisemitic, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic hate speech that proliferated Friday on Twitter, with the Post noting that "one single-word tweet, showing a single racial slur in all capital letters, was retweeted more than 700 times and liked more than 5,000 times." The paper adds that the tweet was posted Thursday night and "remained online more than 16 hours later." One social media analyzing firm reported that, in the 12 hours after Musk completed his deal with Twitter, use of the n-word surged almost 500%.
Musk's plans to manage this chaos haven't yet been detailed, though he did offer one hint on Friday. "Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints," he posted, without elaborating. Musk also noted in his post that "no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes," meaning we likely won't see, say, former President Donald Trump's account back in business in the immediate future. But former Twitter executives are wary on what impact such a panel would have, per the Post. "This isn't currently working at Facebook and is really ill-suited to a platform where content moves at the speed of Twitter," Brandon Borrman, Twitter's former head of communications tweeted. Meanwhile, Jason Goldman, an ex-Twitter VP, is skeptical Musk will hold to his commitment on the council at all.
Musk's remarks also had people wondering why Kanye West's account appeared up and running again after it had been locked down by Twitter earlier this month for an antisemitic threat. Musk tweeted that any shift to Ye's account took place before he officially took the reins, and that "they did not consult with or inform me." The New York Times, however, notes that, despite all the buzz, the ban on West's account hadn't been lifted, because there never was a ban or suspension in the first place. Instead, Ye's account had been merely "restricted" to "read only" mode, which means that even though the rapper wasn't permitted to post or interact using the account, it was still on the site and visible, other than the offending tweet that's been removed. It's not clear if Ye is still restricted, but he hasn't posted since Oct. 9. (More Twitter stories.)
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