Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino refuted a Bloomberg report Wednesday stating that harmful content and hate speech have proliferated on the platform since Elon Musk bought the company.
The report cites a number of expert sources, including a USC Marshall Neely Social Media Index survey that indicated more people were seeing content that’s “bad for the world” on Twitter than on social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok. The report also included a variety of statistics related to slurs and offensive language being on the uptick since Musk’s takeover, drawn from the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s analysis of Twitter toxicity (published March 28).
Despite the relative recency of the CCDH’s analysis and Bloomberg’s overall pool of evidence, Yaccarino refuted their contents.
“The Bloomberg story pulled together a collection of incorrect, misleading, and outdated metrics, mostly from the period shortly after Twitter’s acquisition,” she said. “It also lacks extremely important context not to mention critical updates on our progress and actions.”
Yaccarino then went on to say that over the past eight months, Twitter’s been reducing hate speech’s reach, giving brands heightened control over their ads’ placement, and “proactively preventing child exploitation.”
The official “Twitter Business” account also tweeted about the Bloomberg report and general toxicity situation on Twitter, arguing that much of the evidence for Twitter being a home for harmful content was either gathered immediately after Musk’s acquisition, before he had time to make changes to the platform, or was misrepresenting the realities of Twitter. For example, while Twitter may have more offensive language on the site now than before, its reach is reduced, ergo, less people overall see it.
”Our research and every piece of independent research done since Elon Musk took over Twitter has found that hate, misinformation and extremist content are on the rise on his site,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the CCDH, in response to TheWrap’s request for comment. “Twitter is trying to reassure concerned advertisers and the public that they are addressing this crisis. But every time their claims are put to the test, they fall far short.”
For context as to why this debate around Twitter toxicity matters, the site’s been suffering from dwindling ad revenue and remains unprofitable, despite the company eliminating thousands of jobs, declining to pay rent on certain property, and enlisting advertising veteran Yaccarino to right the ship.
While it may seem natural for a site to be the Wild West of language when its owner openly admits he’ll say what he wants, financial consequences be damned, advertisers have taken umbrage with that attitude, which in turn has scared away potential sources of cashflow for the site.
Musk has made moves to help matters, like sharing ad revenue with creators to keep big names using his platform, thereby drawing attention to it. Yaccarino’s tweet appears to be another such measure to ensure advertisers feel Twitter is worth their time.
In response to TheWrap’s request for comment regarding platform toxicity and harmful content, Twitter replied with its customary poop emoji.
