photo courtesy of NYTimes
According to the Washington Post, a slew of racists has crawled out of the Twitter woodwork to openly show their anti-blackness following Elon Musk’s official takeover of the social media platform.
Immediately following the closure of the deal on October 27, which sat at around $44 billion, there has been a 500% increase in the use of the n-word on the platform.
An emboldened cast of anonymous trolls spewed racist slurs and Nazi memes onto Twitter in the hours after the billionaire industrialist took over the social network, raising fears that his pledge of unrestricted free speech could fuel a new wave of online hate.
Musk tweeted his intentions to allegedly make no “major content decisions” until he convened a moderation council to offer “widely diverse viewpoints” on decisions. However, just hours later, he continued to write, “Comedy is now legal on Twitter.”
Clearly, people took his words to mean that it was open season to spew hateful rhetoric into the platform because instances have become popularized where people are learning that Musk has no intention of censoring hate speech, all under the guise of “free speech.”
One anonymous user wrote, ‘“I can freely express how much I hate n*****s … now, thank you, Elon,” Another tweet read, “Elon now controls Twitter. Unleash the racial slurs. K***S AND N*****S.”
Activists and Black Twitter are demanding action following the disgusting uptick in hate speech.