Report claims hate speech up on Twitter, here’s what Elon Musk has to say

Since his Twitter acquisition, Elon Musk has been claiming that hate speech has seen a decline on the social media platform. Last week, he even went on to say that “hate speech impressions” on the microblogging website were down by one-third “from pre-spike levels.” The “Chief Twit” has now shared more numbers essentially strengthening his previous claim and denying a new report that contradicts the data shared by Twitter’s new owner.
Musk described the findings as “utterly false” in a tweet in response to a post by The New York Times on the study.

Musk also shared a graph which looks a lot like the one he shared a week ago. The graph shows a decline in hate speech impressions (number of times a tweet was viewed) “despite significant user growth!” He also said that Twitter will publish this data weekly.
“Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach. Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity,” Musk noted.

Giving further insights, the Tesla CEO also claimed that Twitter is now seeing 500 million tweets per day and billions of impressions “so hate speech impressions are
Twitter bigger than ever?
Musk also claimed that the social media platform is now serving almost 90 billion tweet impressions per day! “Just how incredibly alive the system actually is will become obvious as we show view count on all tweets,” he said in a different tweet.

Hate speech rose during under Musk’s reign, says report
Musk’s response came soon after a research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) claimed that hate speech on the platform rose since Musk took over Twitter. To support the claims, the NGO said that an average of 1,282 tweets with slurs against Black people appeared on Twitter every day before Musk took the reins of the company.
The number of slurs jumped to 3,876 after the acquisition and further soared to 4,650 tweets a day on average in the week when Musk claimed a decline in hate speech impressions. Additionally, slurs against transgender people increased 62% since Musk bought Twitter, soaring to 5,117 tweets a day on average, the report found.

‘Engagement on hate speech increased’
Not only the number of average tweets, the CCDH report found that engagement in hate speech has also risen since Musk took over the company. The average number of likes, replies, and retweets on posts with hateful content jumped to 49.5 from 13.3 before the Musk era, the report found.
“Elon Musk sent up the batsignal to every kind of racist, misogynist and homophobe that Twitter was open for business, and they have reacted accordingly,” Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, was quoted as saying.