Musk also welcomed back thousands of banned accounts, including many suspended for promoting hate or violence, even as he has personally has tweeted misinformation and interacted with far-right accounts. Sensing an opportunity, if not a welcome, political operatives and attention-seeking profiteers have rushed to fill the vacuum that the drop in moderation efforts has left, employees said.
That has changed the tenor of the site in its No. 2 market, Japan, where nearly 59 million are estimated to use the site, and made it more fraught in India (nearly 24 million users) and Brazil (nearly 20 million), the third and fourth largest markets, according to current and former staff and researchers. Musk cut virtually all staff in Brazil, allowing an unmoderated surge in misinformation that helped fuel this month’s attacks on the country’s government center.
Even in the better-moderated English-speaking world, the tone of Twitter has become rougher, say those tasked with monitoring the site. Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, who worked at Twitter from 2014 to 2016, told The Washington Post that the platform had already been like a “sewer” in her country before Musk let some of the worst users back on.