Led by Elon Musk, Twitter recently restored tens of thousands of accounts, some belonging to conspirators or anti-vaccinationists, at the risk of reigniting a disinformation phenomenon on the social network.
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According to developer Travis Brown, cited by several organizations, more than 27,000 recovered accounts have been suspended for misinformation, harassment and hate demonstrations.
Contacted by AFP, he said his list was incomplete and the number of such accounts could be higher.
“The recovery of these accounts will make the platform a magnet for actors who want to spread false information,” warns Jonathan Nagler, co-director of the Center on Social Media and Politics at NYU (New York University).
“And there will be less moderation of hate speech, which will make the network less hospitable to many users,” he adds.
Among the personalities returning to the blue bird are “Antivax” figures such as cardiologist Peter McCullough or doctor Robert Malone, who were suspended a year ago for warning of the alleged dangers of vaccines against the coronavirus, without that verified information supported this.
Since his account was unbanned, Robert Malone, who has more than 869,000 subscribers, has published several messages with false information about the COVID-19 vaccine.
Among the former outcasts who have been allowed back into the social network is former President Donald Trump, who nonetheless, for the time being, is keeping to his promise not to return and only using the social network Truth Social, which he founded himself last year .
Mike Lindell is one of those who picked up the torch. The CEO of My Pillow, twice suspended in 2021 and an unconditional supporter of Donald Trump, called for “melting down electronic voting machines to make them prison bars” once his account was restored.
A direct reference to the never-proven conspiracy theory that the counting of votes in the 2020 presidential election was manipulated with the help of voting machines.
Far-right activist Pamela Geller, who has been featured by counter-extremism rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the most flamboyant anti-Muslim activists in the United States,” was also reinstated on Twitter.
Reinvest in moderation
Earlier this week, website creator The Geller Report published a message about Muslim students who had complained that a professor had shown them pictures of the Prophet Muhammad.
“Have they beheaded him yet?” she tweeted in reference to the October 2020 killing of French history and geography professor Samuel Paty in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a Paris suburb.
“Under the Musk era, disinformation super-mongers feel emboldened and readers have less evidence of the reliability of the sources,” said Jack Brewster of media observatory NewsGuard.
In mid-December, Twitter pointed out in a publication on its platform that a “permanent suspension was a disproportionate measure to have broken the rules” of the social network.
Elon Musk then clarified that Twitter “remains committed to preventing dangerous content” on its site, as well as “malicious actors.” “Recovered accounts must always comply with our rules.”
Twitter was taken to task this week after an incident involving Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin.
The 24-year-old defender’s cardiac arrest on Monday following shock on the pitch prompted many Twitter users to make a connection to the coronavirus vaccine.
“Before the COVID-19 vaccines, you didn’t see athletes fall as hard on the field as they are today,” Republican House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted. “It’s time to study COVID-19 vaccines.”
While Elon Musk recently hinted that he plans to step down at the helm of Twitter, it will “take more to fix the platform,” warns Nora Benavidez of media observatory Free Press.
She warns that it will be necessary to “take a series of steps to reverse Musk’s changes, reinvest in moderation, and restructure the platform’s governance.”