Elon Musk at a Press Conference

Twitter Turns Bitter as “Chief Twit” Musk Rolls Out the Welcome Mat for Hate

Within hours of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter as self-anointed “Chief Twit” with promises of a platform that would be “warm and welcoming to all” and assurances that the social media site would not become a “hellscape,” the newly- branded free-speech-for-all app became a free-for-all. 

“Elon now controls twitter. Unleash the racial slurs. K- – -S AND N- – – – -S,” rhapsodized one subscriber, using slurs for Jews and Black people. “I can freely express how much I hate n—–s … now, thank you elon,” trumpeted another.

A tsunami of racial slurs and hate postings ranting against religious, ethnic, racial and gender targets engulfed Twitter. One tweet with just one word, a racial slur in caps, got over 700 tweets and more than 5,000 likes.

Use of the n-word on the app spiked nearly 500 percent over the 12 hours after Musk’s deal was finalized according to the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a group that analyzes hundreds of millions of messages across social media.

A user on 4chan—the controversial anonymous social platform that has allowed postings encouraging threats of violence, cyber attacks and child pornography, to name a few—heralded the Musk takeover of Twitter as an opportunity to post antisemitic messages and memes. “Now that Elon is taking over Twitter it’s time to finally put our skills to use,” the user wrote. “There will be maximum chaos at Twitter over the next 48 hours so now is our time to strike while the iron is hot.”

The user called on others to use the hashtag #TheNoticing in their postings of the Nazi-inspired canard that Jews control the world through hidden intrigues. 

Kanye West, he of the openly antisemitic rants from October, was welcomed back to Twitter (temporarily), a disturbing development according to Anti-Defamation League (ADL). “We are concerned that Mr. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter may accelerate what ADL has seen repeatedly: the pushing out of marginalized communities from social media,” it said in a statement.

After the surge of hate speech was gotten under control, Musk released statistics and made some pointed commentary on the situation. It appears some saw Musk’s vision of “a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner” as an open invitation for prejudice. 

Following the incident, Elon Musk posted this tweet.

Only time will tell if Twitter under its new management will fulfill the promise, or if it will go as one user suggested, “Ugh. This place is gonna become a hotbed of hate.”