Twitter has successfully cut down hate speech on the platform considerably, new chief Elon Musk claimed on Thursday. Under Musk’s strict revamp plans, Twitter claims to have come down hard on bots and abusive accounts, and now it appears that the new modus operandi is showing some results. Musk’s announcement comes after he shared a poll on Twitter, asking users if he should offer “general amnesty” to suspended accounts. Previously suspended accounts, like that of former US President Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West, have also returned to the platform recently.
Musk tweeted that on Twitter, hate speech impressions are down by one-third from pre-spike levels. They have reduced from over 10 million on October 20, 2022, to below 2.5 million on November 22.
“I have half a mind to wag my finger at the 1500 accounts that caused the spike, but I shall forebear,” Musk added as an afterthought.
Musk also added that reducing the maximum allowed tweets per day to a low number has helped.
Several users commented on Musk’s post, appreciating Musk and the team’s effort. One user (@JohnathonWillow) enquired, “I'm assuming the "hate speech" metric is a measurement of how often racial slurs or certain bigoted phrases are used?” To this Musk replied:
Another user (@ahmedsalims) said that it appears that all the haters have left Twitter. To this, Musk replied by saying “fun level” has increased on the platform and that he is having a "great time".
As mentioned earlier, Musk posted a poll on the platform asking Twitterati if he should offer a “general amnesty” to suspended accounts. He said that the only caveat in place will be whether they haven’t “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam”.
At the time of writing, the poll garnered 72.6 percent votes in favour, and 27.4 percent against.
Twitter rolls out tools for advertisers to finetune approach towards customers
Additionally, the microblogging platform rolled out three products to help advertisers drive mid- to lower-funnel results and improve the relevance of their promotional content for users.
The three new tools are: Website Conversions Optimization (which helps improve the way advertisers reach out to customers most likely to convert on lower-funnel website action), Dynamic Product Ads (which allows advertisers to showcase the right product to the right customer at the right time to drive sales and coversions), and Collection Ads (which helps advertisers showcase a collection of product images through a main hero image and smaller thumbnails below it).