Adam Schiff Blasts Twitter, Then Gets Fact-Checked by Elon Musk Himself

By Richard Moorhead December 8, 2022 at 3:26pm

Elon Musk opted to set the record straight after a Democrat member of Congress attacked his administration of Twitter.

Musk responded to Rep. Adam Schiff after the California Democrat claimed that Twitter had become a platform for racial slurs after the multibillionaire’s acquisition in a Thursday tweet.

On Elon Musk’s Twitter:

– Slurs against Black people have tripled
– Slurs against women are up 33%
– Slurs against Jewish people are up 61%
– And slurs against gay men are up 58%

These numbers are abysmal – and unacceptable.

Today, @RepMarkTakano and I are demanding action.

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 8, 2022

Schiff earlier issued a tweet accusing Musk of abusing animals in testing for Neuralink, one of his technology companies.

When he’s not sabotaging safeguards against digital misinformation and hate,

Or laying off thousands of employees,

Elon Musk is running a company that performs cruel and deadly tests on animals?

Doesn’t sound like a genius to me.

Not even an unstable one.

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 7, 2022

Schiff and fellow California Rep. Mark Takano also sent a letter to Musk criticizing his reforms to Twitter.

The two Democrats cited the left-wing Center for Countering Digital Hate for their statistics in the letter.

Does Twitter promote hate speech?

The same group led a campaign to lobby Google into demonetizing several conservative news websites.

Musk rejected Schiff’s assertion — revealing that “hate speech impressions” have declined at Twitter since he took the helm of the social media company.

False, hate speech impressions are actually down by 1/3 for Twitter now vs prior to acquisition @CommunityNotes

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 8, 2022

Musk earlier shared internal Twitter data attesting to an overall decline of content deemed hate speech.

Hate speech impressions (# of times tweet was viewed) continue to decline, despite significant user growth!@TwitterSafety will publish data weekly.

Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach. Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity. pic.twitter.com/36zl29rCSM

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022

Attacking or threatening others on the basis of their race and ethnicity remains a violation of Twitter’s community standards.

This policy hasn’t changed since Musk became the company’s new owner.

Progressive Democrats have criticized Musk’s vision to roll back internet censorship at Twitter.

President Joe Biden even indicated that the federal government is watching Musk in a post-midterm news conference, while declining to accuse the technologist and entrepreneur of any specific wrongdoing.

Schiff hasn’t responded to Musk’s rebuttal of his own claims.

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