Musk's new Twitter free speech policy criticized

Elon Musk’s plan to acquire Twitter has alarmed human rights activists in Asia and the Middle East, where social media platforms have been accused of inciting violence.

Musk has called himself a free speech absolutist and criticized Twitter’s policy of moderating content. But rolling back such curbs on hate speech would put vulnerable people at risk, said Phil Robertson of advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

“Incitement to violence against a minority group, like we saw with the Rohingya when the platforms did not take down hate speech and abuse, is a very real danger,” Robertson, deputy director for Asia, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

United Nations investigators said Facebook played a key role in spreading hate speech that fueled violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar in 2017, which refugees said included mass killings and rape by soldiers.

Twitter, which has faced criticism for not doing enough to stop ethnic slurs, hate speech and incitement to violence in Ethiopia where there has been fighting since 2020, did not respond to a request for comment.

In India, which is the third most popular country in the world for Twitter with about 24 million users according to research site Statista, slurs and memes on social media regularly attack Muslims and low-caste Dalits.

Musk’s proposals would put him at loggerheads with Asian governments that want tech companies to quickly remove content they deem as inappropriate, and the European Union where new rules call for more aggressive online policing of hate speech.