The former Twitter is dramatically failing to combat hate. Musk's social network tolerates explicit racism, anti-Semitism and is "the most dangerous platform for LGBTQ people"
Last week, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit legal organisation, published a report on a test to see how much the former Twitter, now called social network X, has improved in dealing with hate posts. Despite this being a recurring problem on the platform, moderators have not removed 86% of the hate content flagged.
The experiment that CCDH conducted was to flag 300 posts on X that were "clear examples of exceeding X's rules for hate speech". It is the flagging that should indicate that the posts in question will be given increased attention by the platform. It is therefore alarming that even after a week, the vast majority of them have not been removed.
Moreover, this is a problem that CCDH has pointed out in the past and X has even sued it for. Thus, it cannot be said that the social network was not aware of its problem with hate content.
The rules governing hateful behaviour that are supposed to apply on X state that it is not allowed to disseminate content that spreads hatred against a protected group. Expressions of anti-Semitism, racism, dehumanizing people based on their religion, social class, age, disability, health, ancestry, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or sexual orientation, among others, are prohibited.
Even so, according to CCDH, there remained posts on X, for example, that referred to Hitler as "a hero who will help secure a future for white children" or posts saying that "Blacks don't need to provoke before they attack. It's their nature".
The worst platform for LGBTQ
In addition to X's lack of moderation of hateful content aimed at racial and ethnic groups, it doesn't work well as an environment for queer people. According to GLAAD, a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for queer people and cultural change, X is "the most dangerous platform for LGBTQ people."
The organization made that statement about the former Twitter when it conducted its annual social media assessment this summer. While other social networks have improved in protecting queer people, X has gotten worse. Elon Must, who bought the network and renamed it from Twitter to just X, may be directly to blame for X's dismal state of genderlessness.
"Since Elon Musk took over the company last fall, attacks on LGBTQ people on [X] have increased dramatically," NBC News reports. One reason is that Musk has fired a huge number of employees, so the company simply doesn't have the people to adequately moderate hateful content.
In addition, Musk describes himself as a "free speech absolutist" and thinks the company's previous approach was too strict.
