Right-Wing Trolls Are Trying to Break Back Into Twitter

Elon Musk's “free speech” promise is igniting an extremist revival, but the “replatforming” has only just begun.
Elon Musk sitting on a stage in front of a black curtain
Photograph: Trevor Cokley/Alamy

Within two hours of Twitter’s announcement that it had accepted Elon Musk’s $44 billion offer to buy the company and take it private, the first concerning signs flashed across Joe Mulhall’s screen. Mulhall is director of research at Hope Not Hate, a British antiracism and antifascism group that campaigns against bigotry.

When Musk heralded his purchase of Twitter by saying “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Mulhall saw new accounts being set up on Twitter by previously banned far-right individuals and groups, including English far-right anti-Islam political activist Tommy Robinson and Britain First, a fascist political party. In the United States, other neo-Nazis that had previously been banned from the platform set up new accounts on Twitter.

The accounts were reported to Twitter by Mulhall, Hope Not Hate, and others and were subsequently banned before they could gain a foothold. But some worry this could signal a resurgence of people previously barred from Twitter for spreading hate and conflict, should Musk follow through with his promise to loosen rules around what kind of posts are permitted.

The ripple effects have already begun. On Monday, Christopher Bouzy, the founder of Bot Sentinel, a service that tracks inauthentic behavior on Twitter, noticed that a number of left-leaning accounts had already complained about losing followers. Bouzy noticed that he had lost 400 of his 77,000-odd followers. At first, he didn’t think it was a big deal: People churn through who they follow on a regular basis.

Bot Sentinel updates at midnight eastern time. When Bouzy looked at the data at 7 am, it became clear something more significant was happening. On a normal day, an average of around 750 accounts out of the roughly 2.5 million he samples are either deactivated or suspended.

The results by the end of April 25 were significantly different—5,132 accounts from across the political spectrum had been deactivated and a further 341 suspended. Other indicators looked strange as well. “We’re seeing this significant increase in right-wing accounts starting to follow these other accounts,” Bouzy says. “It could be a bat signal where they feel safe to come back to Twitter, or it could be something else going on.”

Manoel Ribeiro, who studies platform migration among the alt-right at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, terms it “replatforming.” “If Twitter adopts a free speech absolutist philosophy, it may very well be that decisions related to hate speech or incitement to harm will be reversed, reinstating popular far-right accounts,” he says.

The issue isn’t limited to the United States. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has seen tenfold gains in his number of followers in the last two days, compared to his prior average, while Canadian premier Justin Trudeau lost followers on April 26, countering average daily gains. “It doesn’t make sense,” Bouzy says. “I don’t understand why Musk acquiring Twitter would have that effect on Brazilian politics.” Twitter confirmed to NBC News that the increase in account activity wasn’t automated and was organic churn that could be linked to Musk’s takeover of the platform.

Others have a hunch about what may be going on. “We’ve seen widespread excitement across the channels that we monitor on all tech platforms about the Musk takeover,” says Mulhall. “Musk has said he’s a free speech absolutist. We know what free speech absolutism looks like in social media.”

Mulhall points to low-interference, light-touch, minimal-moderation social media platforms like Gab, Truth Social, and Parler, all of which are popular with the alt-right because their doctrine allows much more free speech than their mainstream equivalents—even if such speech can often transmogrify into hate speech. Parler, for instance, gained 2 million users in one weekend in November 2020 after Twitter cracked down on disinformation in the run-up to the US presidential election. But platforms favored by the alt-right could lose users as quickly as they gained them. “I can imagine that ‘replatforming’ could thus bring back these communities into Twitter and decrease the attractiveness of third-party alternatives,” says Ribeiro.

“We know what happens in those online spaces,” says Mulhall. “They’re awash with extremism, racism, misogyny, violence, and terrorism.” He points out that the effects of radically broadening the definition of free speech on social media are well established: Twitter tussled with these issues before its crackdown on hate speech, and popular alt-right platforms demonstrate the ramifications of such policies. “We’ve seen those platforms, they already exist, and we know how toxic they become.” Truth Social and Parler did not immediately respond to requests to comment. Responding to WIRED's request for comment, Gab told Hope Not Hate to “go pound sand and cry more about words on the internet,” via Twitter.

Musk has his own views—and believes his stance on free speech has been misrepresented. Calling worries about radicalization and hate on Twitter an “extreme antibody reaction,” Musk claims that his definition of free speech is simply that set out by law, which—though he didn’t say this—only prohibits hate speech in some countries, not the US. “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law,” he tweeted. Many have already pointed out that free speech laws differ depending on the country you live in, while some have taken Musk’s words as tacit permission to spread hate.

Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal, policy, and trust lead and an immigrant to the United States, has been subjected to racist and misogynistic abuse after Musk appeared to agree with criticism directed at her. Musk also appeared to criticize Twitter deputy general counsel Jim Baker in a response to a tweet by alt-right influencer Mike Cernovich—one of the biggest proponents of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory—and Baker has been subject to similar abuse. Twitter’s global head of partners, Lara Cohen, tweeted her lack of surprise at the turn such conversations have taken on Twitter following the takeover.

It all sets a worrying precedent, says Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. “The extreme right in the United States was emboldened by Trump in 2017,” he says. “The result was a flurry of violent attacks all over the country, starting in my town, Charlottesville. Now Musk is playing those same roles: big brother, cheerleader, enabler. On day two after his offer was accepted, we have seen American fascists swarm Twitter staffers whom Musk has criticized publicly. We should expect more violence soon.”

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, believes that this week has played out like a traditional Twitter spat: “Lots of light and heat, and not a lot of facts,” he says. But he remains concerned about the unanswered questions. “Irrespective of whether he believes it, Musk has articulated a childlike view of online discourse that ignores the way in which abuse, power, and algorithms intersect to make speech uneven in its visibility, impact, and safety,” he says. “I’m not sure these ideas will be able to withstand contact with reality—particularly in a completely unmoderated, unfiltered context.”

Stuck in the middle of this morass are Twitter’s content moderators, who must abide by current rules as the platform continues to operate but are conscious that Twitter’s new owner appears to be touting a fundamentally different approach to acceptable speech.

In an all-hands meeting on April 25, just hours after Musk’s deal was accepted by the board, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal struggled to answer employee questions about key policy decisions. Agrawal tossed out a question about whether former US president Donald Trump—banned from Twitter in January 2021 for inciting violence through his posts ahead of the Capitol insurrection—would be allowed to return to the site. Agrawal posed this question to Musk, even though he was not at the meeting. “Once the deal closes, we don’t know which direction the platform will go,” Agrawal reportedly said. “We don’t have all the answers. This is a period of uncertainty.” That sentiment was echoed other employees, including project manager Edward Perez, who tweeted that the takeover was a time of “genuine discomfort and uncertainty.”

Elon Musk did not respond to a request for comment via his Twitter account. WIRED asked Twitter about the platform’s policy on acceptable speech while ownership is being transferred, and whether the company is able to confirm that Twitter will remain committed to preventing hate speech and abuse under new ownership. Twitter spokesperson Jasmine Basi responded: “We have no comment.”

Updated 4/27/2022 16:30 ET: This piece has been updated to clarify that the US has no legislation that prohibits hate speech.


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