Elon Musk Reveals How He Is Defining ‘Hate Speech’ On Twitter

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said Thursday that he is defining hate speech on the platform based on the definitions that the platform used prior to Musk taking over.

Musk made the revelation in a tweet about how the company has cracked down on hate speech on the platform amid pressure from advertisers and left-wing activists.

“Hate speech impressions down by 1/3 from pre-spike levels,” Musk tweeted. “Congrats to Twitter team!”

“I have half a mind to wag my finger at the 1500 accounts that caused the spike, but I shall forebear,” Musk continued. “Reducing the max allowed tweets/day to a number below what a speed typist on meth could do was helpful.”

Musk responded to a question from DailyWire+ host Jordan Peterson about how he defines hate speech.

“This is simply based on the same list of terms that Twitter has used for some time, so ceteris paribus,” Musk responded.

This is simply based on the same list of terms that Twitter has used for some time, so ceteris paribus

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2022

Earlier in the day, Musk announced that he was going to grant a mass amnesty to accounts that had been previously banned on the platform.

Musk made the decision in response to the final results of a poll he tweeted Wednesday. The platform will begin unbanning accounts en masse, except for those who broke the law or engaged in excessive spam, next week, he tweeted in response to the results. Musk has already unbanned a number of popular accounts that were permanently suspended before he took over as “Chief Twit.”

On Wednesday, Musk tweeted a poll asking whether or not to unban users that had been permanently suspended. “Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” he wrote.

More than three million users voted in the poll, and the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of amnesty; nearly three-quarters of voters, 72.4%, voted “yes,” while just 27.6% voted “no.”

“The people have spoken,” Musk wrote after the poll concluded. “Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.”

Before the poll ended, Musk seemed to indicate that in effect, the platform would significantly curtail content moderation to target illegal content and increase transparency.

John Rigolizzo contributed this report.