LeBron James was rightfully concerned, like the rest of us, over the increase in racist, homophobic and antisemitic comments posted on Twitter since Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform.
Following the completed $44 billion deal late last week, a slew of hate speech posts from anonymous users exploded on the social media platform, including racial slurs, Nazi memes, and the N-word, which were, in part, intended to test out the limit of the company’s new moderation policies, The Washington Post reported.
“I don’t know Elon Musk, and, tbh, I couldn’t care less who owns Twitter. But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously because this is scary AF. So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech,” said James, 37, and pointed at new research in a Business Insider article.
The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) tweeted on Friday, “over the last 12 hours, the use of the N-word has increased nearly 500% from the previous average.”
Musk, 51, has many concerned over his relaxed attitude towards content moderation, which includes his thoughts on removing the ban on Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
However, before his Twitter takeover, Musk issued a public letter to advertisers, assuring them that he didn’t want the platform to “become a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences!”
Only time will tell how this plays out.
