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Californian Rep. Adam Schiff took to Twitter on Thursday to share a series of false statistics about the increased occurence of hate speech on the social media platform.
Schiff claimed that "On Elon Musk's Twitter ... Slurs against Black people have tripled - Slurs against women are up 33% - Slurs against Jewish people are up 61% - And slurs against gay men are up 58%."
"These numbers are abysmal – and unacceptable. Today, [Rep. Mark Takano] and I are demanding action," he adds at the end.
Musk responded a few hours later, saying "False, hate speech impressions are actually down by 1/3 for Twitter now vs prior to acquisition."
Adam Schiff's original post came from a study published last week in the New York Times that looked at instances of specific slurs appearing in users' tweets.
Regarding this study and the misconception that hate speech has increased on his platform, Musk explained that hate speech impressions, referring to the number of times a tweet has been viewed, "continue to decline, despite significant user growth."
"Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach," he adds. "Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity."
Musk has been open about the fact that he will not be, for the most part, censoring people's words or speech, but instead will be deprioritizing negative and hateful speech, so as to ensure that fewer people see it.
He also states that "There are about 500M tweets per day & billions of impressions, so hate speech impressions are <0.1% of what’s seen on Twitter!"
Other Twitter users, including some prominent political commentators, also responded to the claims.
"Congressman, The data you shared is unreliable, but leaving apart useless debates, I'm sure you're glad that Elon Musk set as the #1 priority fight against child sexual exploitation content. Platform is safer, and soon Twitter will announce even stricter measures against any abuse," replied one user.
"Corrupt congressman abuses office to call for mass censorship using fake stats. Threatens [Elon Musk]," said Conservative activist Tom Fitton.
Even Charlie Kirk jumped in to say, "Also, Groomer is not hate speech."
Schiff claimed that "On Elon Musk's Twitter ... Slurs against Black people have tripled - Slurs against women are up 33% - Slurs against Jewish people are up 61% - And slurs against gay men are up 58%."
"These numbers are abysmal – and unacceptable. Today, [Rep. Mark Takano] and I are demanding action," he adds at the end.
Musk responded a few hours later, saying "False, hate speech impressions are actually down by 1/3 for Twitter now vs prior to acquisition."
Adam Schiff's original post came from a study published last week in the New York Times that looked at instances of specific slurs appearing in users' tweets.
Regarding this study and the misconception that hate speech has increased on his platform, Musk explained that hate speech impressions, referring to the number of times a tweet has been viewed, "continue to decline, despite significant user growth."
"Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach," he adds. "Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity."
Musk has been open about the fact that he will not be, for the most part, censoring people's words or speech, but instead will be deprioritizing negative and hateful speech, so as to ensure that fewer people see it.
He also states that "There are about 500M tweets per day & billions of impressions, so hate speech impressions are <0.1% of what’s seen on Twitter!"
Other Twitter users, including some prominent political commentators, also responded to the claims.
"Congressman, The data you shared is unreliable, but leaving apart useless debates, I'm sure you're glad that Elon Musk set as the #1 priority fight against child sexual exploitation content. Platform is safer, and soon Twitter will announce even stricter measures against any abuse," replied one user.
"Corrupt congressman abuses office to call for mass censorship using fake stats. Threatens [Elon Musk]," said Conservative activist Tom Fitton.
Even Charlie Kirk jumped in to say, "Also, Groomer is not hate speech."
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