LGBTQ organizations report recent rise in hate on Twitter • TechCrunch

Twitter is still in the infancy of its Elon Musk era, but the company’s new owner hasn’t been shy about leaving his mark on the social network.

Major LGBTQ accounts are already noticing a difference on the platform under Musk’s leadership, according to a new survey from GLAAD, Amnesty International and Human Rights Campaign.

Of the 11 LGBGT organizations surveyed, five said they experienced more frequent abuse and hate speech after Musk’s takeover in late October. None of the groups saw a decrease in targeted hate over the same period.

When asked if their organization had encountered a similar rise in hate on other social networks, 90% of respondents said the increase in harassment was limited to Twitter. All organizations said they had faced hate speech and harassment on Twitter, whether in the pre- or post-Musk era.

The survey, which focused on accounts with more than 10,000 followers, is far from comprehensive, but was designed to capture a “snapshot” of the social media landscape in the first few months following the takeover. Musk for $44 billion. After buying Twitter, Musk quickly reversed many of the company’s content moderation decisions, including some high-profile cases that set a disturbing precedent for the platform’s many LGBTQ users.

In November, Twitter reinstated right-wing academic Jordan Peterson and The Babylon Bee, two accounts originally suspended for transphobic tweets about transgender actor Elliot Page and US health official Rachel Levine, respectively. Musk previously called Peterson’s infraction “minor and questionable,” signaling his interest in overturning LGBTQ-related suspensions.

A report by GLAAD and Media Matters released in December tracked a handful of popular right-wing Twitter accounts and found a post-Musk spike in the use of the word ‘groomer’ – an increasingly popular slur that labels people as gay of pedophiles. Prior to Musk’s relaxation of the platform’s rules regarding hate, Twitter classified the term as a banned anti-LGBTQ slur.

In December, Musk himself made the baseless suggestion that Yoel Roth, Twitter’s highly respected former trust and safety manager, was a paedophile, sparking a storm of anti-LGBTQ harassment that ultimately drove the former gay Twitter leader from his Bay Area. House.

“… This lie led directly to a wave of homophobic and anti-Semitic threats, of which Twitter removed very little… [and] in the end, I had to leave my house and sell it,” Roth told Congress earlier this week.

“These are the consequences of this kind of harassment and online speech.”