Twitter drives hate speech from paid users, study finds

2023-05-31 13:36:06

If you pay Twitter, your account will be verified and your messages, even if they are hateful, will be prioritized for him algorithm to reach a much larger audience. And it is that the red social leadered by Elon Musk does not delete 99% of tweets racists y homophobes of paying users and could be boosting them instead.

This is according to a study by the Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit organization dedicated to combating digital hatein an experiment in which he denounced the radical messages than a hundred Twitter Blue subscribers. The reported tweets included messages neo-nazis, antisemitesxenophobic and rejecting the LGTB community, some even pointed out that “Hitler he was right” and insinuated that homosexuals should be shot.

Posting such content would violate Twitter’s own moderation policies, which prohibit “directly attacking others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease”. However, the platform did not respond to the CCDH’s complaints, allowing these messages to continue circulating and gaining traction.

The same group already denounced in a study posted in late March that homophobic rhetoric had skyrocketed 119% on Twitter since Musk took control in October last year. He also pointed out that the social network profits from these hateful attitudes, since it monetizes the increase in the activity of incendiary accounts through digital advertising.

Musk pushes the radicals

In recent months, Musk has fired a large part of the Twitter team that was dedicated to monitoring the content published to ensure that they did not break the rules. The billionaire tycoon has also lifted the restriction on the disinformationhas unblocked the accounts of known propagandists of extreme right and has fueled its popularity by constantly interacting with them, even giving wings to all kinds of hoaxes. This last weekend, unilaterally abandoned the code of good practice European Union (EU) against disinformation on the internet.

To try to counter the bad economic situation of Twitter, Musk has promoted a subscription plan that gives advantages to users who check out. One of these is to multiply the reach of your messages, which now stand out from other non-paying users. Experts have been pointing out for months that all kinds of misinformers have signed up to Twitter Blue to spread their messages at a much greater speed. This has led to an increase in hate speech within the platform, messages that can have real consequences and translate into physical violence against the victims.