Study: Twitter hate speech has surged under Musk

Twitter has been in steady turmoil since its takeover by the world's richest person. Besides the drive to make money with subscriptions, the right-wing political views of Elon Musk have become ever more apparent on the platform in the six month's under his leadership. — Photo: Britta Pedersen/dpa

LOS ANGELES: In October, polarizing billionaire and Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk purchased the polarizing social media platform Twitter for US$44bil (RM195.2bil), promising to change how the site operated.

In various statements, most of them tweets, Musk made allusions to decreased moderation on the platform, pledging to make the site a bastion of "free speech." In the months that followed, he implemented several new initiatives at the company and the site, including firing hundreds of employees, reinstating hundreds of previously banned accounts, stripping badges of verification from most users who did not pay US$8 (RM35 in Malaysia) per month for a Twitter Blue subscription, and pledging to address the site's bot problem.