New research conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) reveals that Twitter ignores 99% of hate speech posted by Twitter Blue subscribers, which isn't at all surprising to anyone who is still on Twitter. Still, it's important to document this inaction, because, as the CCDH argues, this research suggests "that the platform is allowing them to break its rules with impunity and is even algorithmically boosting their toxic tweets." They further explain:
Researchers collected tweets promoting hate from 100 Twitter Blue subscribers. The tweets were reported to the platform using Twitter's own tools for flagging hateful conduct.
Four days after reporting the tweets, researchers found that Twitter had failed to act on 99% of the posts and 100% of the accounts remained active. In the one instance that Twitter removed a hateful tweet, the account from which it was tweeted remains active.
Twitter failed to act on tweets containing racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi, antisemitic or conspiracy content posted in the last month. . .
Twitter failed to act despite the fact that the tweets surfaced by the Center clearly violate the platform's policies against hateful conduct, which bans abuse on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Twitter's lack of responsibility for removing hate speech is unsurprising. Previous studies from CCDH have looked into anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate on Twitter, finding that the platform had failed to act on 89% and 97% of posts, respectively.
The research not only raises concerns that Twitter Blue users can get away with tweeting hateful content, but that they also benefit from algorithmic amplification as a result of their paid subscriptions.
I won't repeat what the tweets that failed to receive Twitter's attention, because they are vile. If you must know, they are included in the research brief.
