Musk Lifted Bans for Thousands on Twitter. Here’s
What They’re Tweeting.
Many reinstated users are tweeting about topics that
got them barred in the first place: Covid-19 skepticism, election denialism and
QAnon.
Stuart A.
Thompson
By Stuart
A. Thompson
Dec. 22,
2022
Since Elon
Musk bought Twitter in October, the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist”
has ad-libbed his way through the company’s moderation policies.
He
initially argued that bans should be reserved for spam accounts, offering
“amnesty” to thousands of suspended users and reinstating former President
Donald J. Trump. Last week, he suspended several journalists, claiming they had
shared public flight data revealing his private location. (Many of the bans
were later reversed.)
To gauge
how Mr. Musk’s content decisions influenced Twitter’s content, The New York
Times analyzed tweets from more than 1,000 users whose accounts were recently
reinstated. The posts were collected for The Times by Bright Data, a social
media tracking company, using a list of reinstated users identified by Travis
Brown, a Berlin-based software developer who has tracked extremism on Twitter.
Most of the
reinstated accounts were deeply partisan — often vocal supporters of Mr. Trump
— and they appeared eager to bring their fiery takes back to the social
network. It was not clear from the data why the users were originally suspended
or why they were reinstated, though their post histories suggest many were
barred as Twitter cracked down on Covid-19 and election-related misinformation.
Imran
Ahmed, the founder and chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital
Hate, said the message that Mr. Musk had sent to the formerly suspended users
was clear: “Welcome back, welcome home.”
Twitter and
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
“I finally
got this account back after being banned for being a #Republican thanks
@elonmusk,” one user tweeted. Just 10 minutes later, the same person wrote:
“Joe Biden is an illegitimate president and the 2020 election was stolen.”
Here is
some of what these users have been saying on Twitter since their return.
Covid-19 misinformation and vaccine doubts
During the
pandemic, Twitter introduced a policy that banned misinformation about the virus,
suspending over 11,000 accounts, including many prominent users, after they
pushed falsehoods. But last month, after Mr. Musk took control of the company,
Twitter said it would no longer enforce that policy.
Several
reinstated users who were barred after the Covid-19 policies went into effect
started posting again about the virus and its vaccines. Some raised doubts
about the effectiveness of vaccines or suggested, without evidence, that
vaccines kill people.
Several
posts mentioned “Died Suddenly,” a misleading documentary released this year
that claimed people were dying from the vaccine. Others shared their own
unsupported anecdotes.
“If you
watched ‘Died Suddenly’ here is more confirming evidence,” one user tweeted,
adding a link to a website titled “Covid Jab Side Effects.” Before being barred
in January 2021, the user had posted several times about Covid-19, including
posts that the virus was not dangerous.
Election
fraud
Twitter
cracked down on election fraud conspiracy theories after the 2020 election,
suspending thousands of accounts that pushed false and misleading ideas about
the election results. Hundreds of users have since returned to Twitter, pushing
those ideas again.
Many
reinstated users focused on close races in the midterm elections, including the
governor’s race in Arizona and the Senate race in Pennsylvania. Kari Lake, the
Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, lost her race but has refused to
concede, citing problems with the voting process and claiming fraud. Many
reinstated users echoed her ideas.
Those
tweets recycled falsehoods and conspiracy theories from the 2020 election,
including that voting machines were rigged to influence the outcome.
“Voters,
not voting machines, used to decide elections in Arizona,” one reinstated user
tweeted. “That’s no longer the case.”
QAnon
QAnon, the
online conspiracy theory, appeared to reach its peak on Jan. 6, 2021, when
hundreds of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. Twitter suspended over
70,000 accounts linked to the group afterward. But many of the movement’s core
ideas have continued playing a significant role in the far-right imagination.
On Twitter,
reinstated users have returned to familiar themes in QAnon lore, raising
questions about prominent Democrats and their association with Jeffrey Epstein,
a former financier who was charged with child sex trafficking and is a central
figure in QAnon conspiracies.
They have
claimed without evidence that Democrats and Hollywood personalities are engaged
in widespread sex trafficking and pedophilia. And they have also repeated
claims that liberals are “grooming” children using drag performances and sex
education.
“I just was
reinstated today after 2 years of permanent suspension,” wrote one reinstated
user with “QAnon” in his user name. “I guess I owe that to the new owner thank
you Elon Musk.”
Stuart A.
Thompson is a reporter on the Technology desk covering misinformation and
disinformation. @stuartathompson
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