Elon Musk is doing nothing about the racist world cup tweets

November 28, 2022 World Events & Announcements

Elon Musk is doing nothing about the racist world cup tweets

Researchers discovered that even after being reported to Twitter, racist tweets targeting football players were still accessible on the website. Twitter appears to have no intention of taking down the hateful racial slurs that are being directed at some of the biggest World Cup stars.

Researchers have discovered that despite being reported to Twitter almost a week ago, racist tweets directed at football stars like Bukayo Saka, Douglas Luiz, Jadon Sancho, Richarlison, Mohamed Salah, and Marcus Rashford were still able to circulate online. No sanctions or suspensions have been applied to the accounts that posted them.

The fact that Twitter left the racist tweets up rather than removing them seems to be part of Elon Musk’s new content moderation policy; rather than removing it, Twitter will now merely sweep it under the rug.
Just one day before the World Cup started, Elon Musk tweeted, “New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” Negative or hateful tweets will be de-boosted and demonetized to the max, so Twitter won’t get any ads or other income.

However, he added that users “won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from the rest of the internet.” Musk did not specify what he considered to be “negative” or “hateful.” However, researchers from a nonprofit that exposes the spread of hate speech on tech platforms were able to find 100 tweets that targeted black football players competing in the World Cup with racial abuse.

There were tweets that used the N-word, contained monkey or banana emojis, urged players to “go back to” other nations, and made fun of players’ use of the English language. While many of those tweets were sent out recently, ahead of the World Cup, others were left to fester on the site for months, showing that the issue with racial abuse on Twitter predates Musk’s takeover.

Last Wednesday, the tweets were located and reported to Twitter. A researcher confirmed that only one of the racist tweets has been removed so far, but claimed that there has not been a significant increase in racist abuse on Twitter since the discovery of the original racist posts.

One of the international events that generate the most activity on Twitter is the World Cup; in fact, the site was temporarily unavailable during the 2010 World Cup. Twitter is less equipped than ever to handle the enormous traffic spikes that result from goals, red cards, and offside decisions as the 2022 World Cup in Qatar gets underway.

When the tournament started, Musk had only been in charge for three weeks. During that time, he reduced Twitter’s workforce from about 7,500 to just 2,700 through mass layoffs and forced resignations.

Additionally, he had eliminated most of Twitter’s contractors, many of whom were responsible for content moderation, including the deletion of hate speech and racist epithets. Musk asserted that Twitter’s “strong commitment to content moderation” remains “absolutely unchanged” in the days following the implementation of those changes. At one point, he even claimed that hate speech had decreased to “below our prior norms.”

Given the vile racist abuse, they endured on Twitter after losing the Euro Championship finals two years ago when all three English players missed penalties in the championship game, the open attacks on English players like Sancho, Rashford, and Saka are particularly upsetting.

According to the new policy Musk announced last week, there is a place for racist abuse on the platform, despite Twitter’s previous claim that there is absolutely no place for the reprehensible racism directed at football players on its platform.