279
Hate speech on X surged for at least 8 months after Elon Musk takeover – new research.
(theconversation.com)
In other news the sky is blue.
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
279 points (93.7% liked)
Technology
62161 readers
3801 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Newsflash: Social network owned by Nazi turns out to have a lot of Nazi content.
I am an unabashed Twitter (not X.com) fan who continued to use it for a bit after he bought it and I feel like non-users don't fully understand how fast it changed.
It wasn't a slow shift to the right, it was nearly instant. I saw the first rightwing shit on my apolitical timeline literally days after he bought it. I stopped using it when I started seeing straight up Nazi shit.
As if I needed any more reason to hate them, Elon Musk, and to a lesser extent Donald Trump, ruined my favorite social media website.
Strange. I’ve been a daily user for 4 years. I’ve still never seen Nazi stuff. It got more political in the past 6 months, but that’s expected.
Anecdotes are not data
Stop using it! Don't buy Tesla. Dont give them your time.
"Preaching to the choir" means to try to convince people of something they already believe, essentially wasting time by expressing an opinion to those who already agree with you; it implies talking to a group who is already persuaded and doesn't need further convincing.
Would this act fall under moral boosting and memory retention exercises?
Wasn't that part of the point?
Well, surprise, that's what happens if you stop censoring stuff that isn't legally prohibited.
Except the word cisgender. That can’t be allowed to be seen.
Is it really a surge when it goes up and stays there? It’s not like it has ebbed. There’s no reason to engage with it anymore.
Well... Yet another case of research confirming the bleeding obvious.
I guess having confirmation is good... 🤷♂️
I thought this rat made access for researchers difficult, just like on reddit, thus getting bulletproof evidence via data harvesting got complicated.
lol that’s like saying if someone eats shit, their breath’s gonna smell bad
Okay, sure. But only because he made them boost alt-right and conspiracy theory content. And fired most of the content moderation team. And made it clear hate speech was tolerated. And made them stop fact-checking. And because of who he is and what he does. 🖕 Musk
Would have been ok if it was all hate directed at Elon but I don't think that's what this is about unfortunately.
Well no fucking shit sherlock.
a jump from an estimated average of 2,179 to 3,246 posts containing hate speech per week
Either way, that's a drop in the bucket of total weekly posts for a global, popular, social media platform. I must be missing something dumb, help?
I am sorry, but this is a really dumb take. For instance Elon Musk is just one guy but his tweets are boosted straight to the top. The amount of increase is secondary to the amount of exposure.
Maybe there are not a ton of hate mongers out their after all, but if the algorithm pushes them to the top it does not matter. The devil is always in the details.
Tbh that is an overall miniscule number and I'd say it's not representative (based on my own occasional visits to that shithole through xcancel.com). It's a question what they even counted as hate speech. Openly calling for the death of some minority probably counted, but did all those "just noticing things" barely-concealed dogwhistles count?
Wait, maybe I should read the article before replying to you...
The study measured overt hate speech, the meaning of which was clear to anyone who saw it – speech attacking identity groups or using toxic language. It did not measure covert types of hate speech, such as coded language used by some extremist groups to spread hate but plausibly deny doing so.