New research from CASM Technology and ISD has found a major and sustained spike in antisemitic posts on Twitter since the company’s takeover by Elon Musk on October 27, 2022. Powered by the award-winning digital analysis technology Beam– and based on a powerful hate speech detection methodology combining over twenty leading machine-learning models– researchers found that the volume of English-language antisemitic Tweets more than doubled in the period following Musk’s takeover. In total, analysts detected 325,739 English-language antisemitic Tweets in the 9 months from June 2022 to February 2023, with the weekly average number of antisemitic Tweets increasing by 106% (from 6,204 to 12,762), when comparing the period before and after Musk’s acquisition.There is a lot in the 32-page report, and its methodology appears to be largely sound. (I think if they would use my definition of antisemitism rather than the IHRA Working Definition, they might find it to be more accurate.)
But one statistic stood out to me: Antisemites were eager to take advantage of the apparent loss of moderation by creating new accounts at a much higher rate than before:
We identified a significant surge of new accounts posting plausibly antisemitic content. 3,855 such accounts were created between Oct 27 and Nov 6, an increase of 223% compared to the 11 days (the equivalent timespan) leading up to Oct 27.To me, this indicates that much of the antisemitism on social media is not simply unintentional or naïve antisemitism. People go out of their way to not only post antisemitic content but to create new accounts dedicated to hate.
I would be interested in finding out if there was a similar surge in new accounts dedicated to racist, anti-Asian, homophobic or misogynist tweets in that time period. I'm sure there was an increase - if for no other reason than that antisemites have other targets of their hate - but I have a feeling that the antisemites are far more activist and willing to take the extra effort to showcase their hate than other bigots
