The Australians Are Asking Elon Musk To Explain The Rise Of Online Hate On Twitter

Here’s another problem that Elon Musk will have to deal with. The Australians have issued him a ‘please explain’ notice in order to have him explain the rise of online hate in Twitter. Here’s the details:

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said about one-third of the complaints her agency received about online hate involved content on Twitter, noting a surge in harmful posts since the Tesla chief bought the platform last year.

Twitter has 28 days to comply with the “please explain” notice, or face fines of almost $700,000 for every day it misses the deadline.

Ms Inman Grant revealed she was particularly concerned about anti-Semitic content, and harmful posts directed at Indigenous Australians and members of the LGBTIQ+ community.

She cited research by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate suggesting Twitter was repeatedly failing to act on harmful content posted by Twitter Blue accounts, the platform’s subscription service.

“Any long-time Twitter user has seen since Elon Musk took over the company in October of last year that their feed looks a lot different, looks a lot more toxic,” she said.

“There have been a range of changes that have caused us great concerns about the current state of the platform.

“But the most important piece of evidence we have is that we have received more complaints about online hate on Twitter in the past 12 months than on any other platform, and we want to know how they’re enforcing their own terms of service on the issue.”

This isn’t good for Elon. The Australians are really good at forcing accountability from online platforms. So if he thinks that he can just flip this off and act like it doesn’t exist, he’s wrong. Thus if I were him, I’d be thinking of a really good response to this or he will find that his life will be more miserable than it already is.

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