Musk tweets misinformation as Twitter is ‘bombarded’ with hate speech

In brief

Twitter was hit with a trolling campaign on Sunday, with 50,000 tweets from 300 accounts sharing hateful speech in an effort Twitter’s head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth described as making it look like Twitter had changed its content moderation policies following Elon Musk’s takeover, even though it hadn’t.

Let’s talk for a minute about slurs, hateful conduct, and trolling campaigns.

Bottom line up front: Twitter’s policies haven’t changed. Hateful conduct has no place here. And we’re taking steps to put a stop to an organized effort to make people think we have.

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) October 30, 2022

Though Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist”, has previously vowed to curtail some content moderation practices, he announced on Friday that Twitter would be forming a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints” to decide on content decisions and account reinstatements.

Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.

No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022

That didn’t stop Musk from tweeting misinformation himself, however, as he spread a false conspiracy theory regarding the Friday attack on US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, in a comment on a tweet by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Musk eventually deleted the tweet, but only after it had already been retweeted 24,000 times and liked 86,000 times, according to NBC News.