Musk’s one-on-one with Kanye signals naïveté moderating Twitter hate speech

Musk welcomed West back to his account after the rapper had his account locked over the weekend for posting a caption that compared Jewish people to Nazis. On Saturday, Musk replied to a message from West and said to him, "Welcome back to my friend!".

After escalating his antisemitic content, West's account was locked on the social networking site. West invoked memories of the Holocaust by suggesting that he would kill Jews. Commentators wondered if West intended to use the military term "death con 3" or "defcon 3" to indicate a high level of defense readiness that the US has never reached before. Vanity Fair reported that both meanings caused alarm bells to ring. The persecution that Jews have historically faced, including that one period in which more than 6 million of them were wiped off the face of the earth, would not be good if he meant to write 'death con' or 'Defcon'.

Musk believes that the First Amendment protects hate speech on social media. As controversy swirled, Musk stuck by West, who is now known as Ye, and has spoken about his mental health issues. Musk said he talked to Ye on Monday and that he thought he took to heart his concerns.

According to the Washington Post, if Musk takes over, he likely wouldn't have locked Ye's account. Between a growing field of state laws that seek to restrict content moderation and Elon Musk's determination to loosen Twitter's policies, posts like Ye's could soon become more prevalent online.

While Musk appeared to back West in this content-moderation fight, a fewTwitter users mocked Musk on his thread, joking that the billionaire's content moderation policy would be to personally meet with every individual person posting hate speech.

So your plan for content moderation is to let everyone say whatever they want and then personally follow up with each individual to explain why what they said was offensive?

— Leah GreenBOOO!!! (@Leahgreenb) October 11, 2022

Elon’s content moderation plan is just him having one-on-ones with each awful person.

— NotABot (@NotABot7238) October 11, 2022

Ars asked if West would eventually be informed of why his posts violated the rules of the social networking site, and a spokeswoman for the company said that there was nothing more to say.

Ars asked Meta if it had anything to say about its decision to lock Ye's account.

What Twitter users want

The billionaire described the platform as the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. The buy-out deal was supposed to be back on after Musk gave up his lawsuit against the company, but now it's been claimed that he can't be trusted.

The question of how safe users will be on the platform moving forward is left open by this deal being in limbo. It is not clear what Musk will mean by loosened content moderation standards. If it threatens violence against a group of people, threatens or promotes terrorism, or promotes violence against people based on race, ethnicity, and religious affiliation, it is not allowed on the platform.

Although private corporations like social media companies are legally allowed to set policies that restrict speech on their platforms, Musk suggested earlier this year that companies should align policies with laws like the First Amendment because he said it was what users wanted.

Musk said in April that if people want less free speech, the government will pass laws to that effect. Going past the law is against the will of the people.

Musk may not know what he wants. The results of a survey were published by the Anti-Defamation League. What solutions do Americans want social media companies to put in place to address the issue? The targets of harassment and those who did not report are both looking for more legal accountability. The majority of respondents agreed that social media platforms should do more to counter hate.