Misogynistic accounts on Twitter have multiplied since the arrival of Elon Musk

The arrival of Elon Musk A Twitter this brought about many changes to the app and one of them was the reopening of accounts that had previously been banned for abusive behavior. A situation that has produced a growth in misogynistic profiles on the social network.

A study conducted by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that since the businessman took control of the platform, these types of accounts have increased by 69%.

It may interest you: Elon Musk mocked a disabled Twitter worker, fired him and then wanted to rehire him

Data to which Musk refers from his story with an ironic tone. “Sorry for doing Twitter I went from a nutritious paradise to a place that has… trolls,” he posted.

While its employees complain about the little capacity they currently have to protect users from this type of content that promotes abuse against women.

It may interest you: The best way to check if Twitter is down

The survey found four peaks during which growth in misogynistic profiles occurred. The first two took place on April 6 and October 28, when Musk announced that he was going to buy the social network and when the transaction was finally finalized.

The other two were November 19 and December 30, the day Twitter restored Andrew Tate’s account and the date he was arrested.

Tate is a far-right misogynistic content creator who was arrested for being involved in human trafficking. Since 2017, his account on the social network had been blocked, but with the arrival of Musk, it was restored again.

It may interest you: Tesla, Twitter and humans would be the key to Elon Musk’s new AI

Cases like his are repeating themselves, in which, during the aforementioned peaks, these accounts received between 22,000 and 29,000 new subscribers per day, all of them newly created profiles.

Part of this is happening, according to employee statements to the BBC, because features designed to protect users from trolling and harassment They are difficult to maintain today.

Given the arrival of Musk, there have been waves of layoffs and this has reduced the workforce in different sectors.

An example is the case of former Content Design Director Lisa Jennings Young. She led a team that designed anti-abuse protection tools such as “safe mode”, the automatic lock function. But that option was dropped halfway through development as she quit after several members of her team were fired.

It may interest you: How content creators subscribed to Twitter Blue will get money

A current employee of Twitter He says that right now “a totally new person, with no experience, is doing what more than 20 people were doing before”. The consequence is that there is “room for a lot more risk” and more “chances of things going wrong”.

This all happens in the middle of a warning that started the European Union to the social network asking it to hire more human moderators and fact-checkers to review posts with abusive content, the Financial Times reported.

This is due to the massive layoffs in the company and possible difficulties in complying with the Digital Services Act, which comes into force in 2024 and requires applications to have specific measures for the treatment of illegal content on their platform. .