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arXiv:2304.04129cs.SI

Auditing Elon Musk's Impact on Hate Speech and Bots

Daniel Hickey, Matheus Schmitz, Daniel Fessler, Paul Smaldino, Goran Muric, Keith Burghardt

Abstract

On October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter, becoming its new CEO and firing many top executives in the process. Musk listed fewer restrictions on content moderation and removal of spam bots among his goals for the platform. Given findings of prior research on moderation and hate speech in online communities, the promise of less strict content moderation poses the concern that hate will rise on Twitter. We examine the levels of hate speech and prevalence of bots before and after Musk's acquisition of the platform. We find that hate speech rose dramatically upon Musk purchasing Twitter and the prevalence of most types of bots increased, while the prevalence of astroturf bots decreased.

arXiv comments
3 figures, 1 table. In Proceedings of the 17th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (2023)
Journal reference
Hickey, D., Schmitz, M., Fessler, D., Smaldino, P. E., Muric, G., & Burghardt, K. (2023). Auditing Elon Musk's Impact on Hate Speech and Bots. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 17(1), 1133-1137
DOI
doi:10.1609/icwsm.v17i1.22222
Subjects
cs.SISocial and Information Networks

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Linked by 2 identifiable commenters in 2 comments across 2 threads, from Sep 2023 to Aug 2024. Found in 1 HN submission from Apr 2023 to Apr 2023. Open submission discussions.

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