Content moderation: Twitter turns to AI to combat hate speech, racism

The level of hate speech in Twitter spaces surged just after billionaire, Elon musk took over the ownership of the platform according to a report by the Centre for Countering Digital (CCDH).

The CCDH also added that Musk's acquisition of Twitter had led to an ‘amnesty’ being granted to some users who were suspended for inciting hate speech and racial slurs on the platform.

The CCDH CEO, Imran Ahmed in a discussion with CNN, described Musk’s decision as being ‘a fast track to his Twitter ‘Hellscape’.

“From racial slurs tripling to a shocking increase in antisemitic and misogynistic tweets, Mr Musk’s Twitter has become a safe space for hate,” the non-governmental organization tweeted on Friday.

In another report, a different research group at the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) also discovered an increased use of the N-word noting that it spiked nearly 500 per cent within the 12 hours immediately after Mr Musk’s deal to buy Twitter went through.

In addition to the discoveries, it was also noted that attacks against gay men and anti-Semitic posts on the platform also spiked following the Tesla chief’s buyout of Twitter.

As the company struggles to come to terms with the ouster of most of its staff following layoffs some months ago where the company slashed its entire workforce from 7,500 to roughly 2,000, it has come to rely on artificial intelligence to resolve most of these issues which are fast destabilizing the integrity of the platform.

A key team on Twitter dedicated to removing content and offensive materials which have to do with child sexual abuse across Japan and the Asia-Pacific region was also left with only one person following the layoffs, according to Wired.

While stating how Twitter aims to resolve the looming conflict, Vice president of Trust and Safety Product, Ella Irwin informed Reuters that the platform plans to end manual reviews by its staff,

“The biggest thing that’s changed is the team is fully empowered to move fast and be as aggressive as possible,” Ms Irwin said.

Irwin, however, said Twitter was not affected by the mass sack and lack of its key technical staff as it would now utilize automation to “aggressively” restrict abuse-prone hashtags as well as search results in areas such as child exploitation.

She added that the platform would automatically monitor these accounts and also, take down tweets reported as offensive.