Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has already encouraged the trolls

It’s been less than a day since Elon Musk launched Twitter, but his move to the top of the company is already having an impact on the platform. Following the news that the deal had closed and that he had begun laying off some of the company’s executive staff, some groups chose to test Twitter’s moderation policies.

The Washington Post that “racist slurs ran rampant overnight,” in the hours immediately following Musk’s takeover. The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a nonprofit organization that studies misinformation on social platforms, said Friday morning that it had seen a sharp spike in the n-word on Twitter.

“Evidence suggests that bad actors are attempting to test @Twitter’s limitations,” the group said. “Several posts on 4chan encourage users to amplify offensive insults.”

A Twitter spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Like both The message and NCRI point out, much of this appears to be organized on platforms like 4Chan and TheDonald, where users encourage each other to spread hate.

It is not yet clear how widespread these efforts are. As with past harassment campaigns, a small group of trolls can have a huge impact, especially at a time of upheaval for a company. Musk, who according to Bloomberg there is A CEO pledges at the company that he won’t reinstate any banned accounts or make “major” changes to the company’s content policies until he can “council moderate content with many different viewpoints.”

He also to a Twitter account called Catturd who complained about shadowbans and loss of followers that he would “dig more”. Previously, Musk said he wanted to remove permanent bans on the platform and that he would be “wrong if in doubt, let the speech exist.”

Notably, the rise in racist slurs comes a day after Musk appealed, saying he didn’t want to turn the platform into a “free-for-all hellish environment where anything can be said without consequence.”

But the increase in hate speech has further fueled concerns that Twitter’s long-standing efforts to clean up its platforms could be reversed under Musk. He has already fired the company’s top policy executive, who played a in shaping the company’s content policies. That’s troubling, says Paul Barrett, deputy director of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

“The danger here is that in the name of ‘free speech,’ Musk will turn back the clock and turn Twitter into a more powerful engine of hate, division and misinformation about elections, public health policy and international affairs,” Barrett said. in a statement. “This is not going to be pretty.”