Elon Musk promotes transphobic content as hate speech surges on his far-right platform

Twitter’s CEO pledges to lobby against gender-affirming care and wants to imprison doctors, as LGBT+ advocates and watchdog groups warn the platform is opening a door for abuse, Alex Woodward reports

(REUTERS)

Since taking over the social media platform last year, world’s wealthiest person and Twitter CEO Elon Musk has appealed to far-right activists and influencers and unleashed a wave of hate speech and abuse aimed at LGBT+ people.

At the start of global Pride celebrations, and in the aftermath of volatile legislative sessions across the country targeting LGBT+ people and healthcare for transgender Americans, Musk declared his intent to lobby against gender-affirming for trans youth while calling for the imprisonment of the doctors and therapists who support them.

Last week, after ultimately capitulating to far-right influencers over whether his platform would even allow the video, Musk’s personal account promoted the transphobic film What Is a Woman? hosted by self-described fascist Matt Walsh.

On 1 June, the first day of LGBT+ Pride Month, the co-founder and CEO of far-right outlet The Daily Wire complained that Twitter had reneged on a plan that would allow the publication to host the 90-minute video on a “dedicated event page and to promote the event to every Twitter user over the first 10 hours”.

Twitter told The Daily Wire that the platform would not do so, after a review determined that the video promotes “hateful conduct” due to misgendering and would violate policies regarding abuse and harassment, according to The Daily Wire’s Jeremy Boreing, After Boreing and other far-right users who pay for Twitter complained, Musk said objecting to the film was a “mistake”.

“Whether or not you agree with using someone’s preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws,” said Musk, adding that using someone’s preferred pronouns is merely “good manners.”

“However,” he added, “for the same reason, I object to rude behavior, ostracism or threats of violence if the wrong pronoun or name is used.”

Musk then announced that the video would not be promoted across the platform broadly, and that there would not be any advertising attached to it, nor would commenting and “deliberate sharing” be allowed. “Sensitive content just won’t be pushed to people unless they ask for it or a friend sends it to them,” he announced.

But he assured Boreing that the controversy would drive up viewership, after The Daily Wire CEO complained about the “terrible day.”

Musk said that the “Streisand effect” would set an “all-time record,” referring to the unintended consequence of censored or restricted materials gaining more visibility because of the controversy around them.

Boering had pushed Musk to do more, with the video’s relatively limited release preventing users from commenting or sharing it.

In a series of posts that night, far-right influencer Robby Starbuck called on Musk to fire anyone involved with limiting the video’s access. A pressure campaign among so-called “verified” far-right users continued that night, including threats from users who suggested that they would stop paying for the subscription service if restrictions were upheld.

Early the next morning, Musk relented.

“Works now. Only limit is that it will not be placed next to advertising,” Musk wrote to far-right transphobic pundit Walsh at 8.28am ET.

Minutes earlier, he shared the video to his 142 million followers, telling them that “every parent should watch this,” explicitly contradicting his own guidance. Musk also is the father of a transgender daughter who disowned him when she turned 18 years old.

Ella Irwin, the chief of Twitter’s trust and safety division, left the company hours earlier. Another executive, AJ Brown, whose role assured advertisers of Twitter’s safety for their brands, also quit the company, according to The Wall Street Journal. Another person on the brand safety team also quit, according to NBC News.

LGBT+ advocacy groups warned that the video and Musk’s promotion are opening a door for a wave of anti-trans abuse on a platform where marginalised groups had previously found community.

“What we’re seeing isn’t really about censorship or discrimination of ideas. It’s about the kind of company Twitter wants to be and the kind of world they want to shape,” Laurel Powell, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, told NBC.

Walsh celebrated Musk’s promotion of the film, calling it a “huge win.”

Musk, meanwhile, has called affirming healthcare for trans youth a “major problem”, compared it to “castration” and pledged to “actively” lobby to “criminalize making severe, irreversible changes to children below the age of consent.”

“Shame on those who advocate this! It is utterly contemptible,” he wrote.

He also called affirming healthcare for trans youth “pure evil” and agreed with a statement from right-wing, anti-trans influencer Jordan Peterson that doctors and care providers, including therapists, should be imprisoned “long term” without parole.

The episode follows Musk’s apparent deflection to autocratic governments in Turkey and India against speech on his platform, while insisting his platform is a haven for free speech, alongside his increasing amplification of bogus conspiracy theories, white supremacist content and far-right pundit Tucker Carlson. Florida’s far-right Governor Ron DeSantis, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, also debuted his campaign in a Twitter Spaces event hosted by Musk and David Sacks, another tech billionaire.

It just so happens that his so-called free speech “absolutism” appears to promote content largely aligned with far-right agendas, while subscribers to his Twitter Blue program – which allows anyone to pay $8 a month for a blue tick next to their user name – are prioritised in Twitter’s algorithm, meaning more people are likely to see those interactions over anyone else.

And Twitter is failing to remove 99 per cent of hate speech posted by those users, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Tweets in a sample reviewed by the watchdog group promoted neo-Nazisim, antisemitism, racism and homophobia, all violations of the company’s own hate speech policies.

Meanwhile, homophobic and transphobic attacks on the platform alongside so-called “groomer” slurs have spiked by 119 per cent since Musk took the helm last October, the organisation found in a separate report.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate identified more than 1.7 million tweets and retweets since the start of 2022 that mention LGBT+ people and slurs against them.

“This isn’t an accident. Elon Musk put up the ‘Bat Signal’ to homophobes, transphobes, racists and all manner of disinformation actors, encouraging them to flood onto Twitter,” the organisation’s CEO Imran Ahmed said in a statement with the report.

“Not only has Musk’s ownership of the platform coincided with an explosion of the hateful ‘grooming’ narrative, but Twitter is monetising hate at an unprecedented rate,” he added.

Hundreds of bills aimed at LGBT+ people, particularly young trans people, have been filed in nearly every state within the last several years, part of a growing campaign among Republican lawmakers and special interest groups wielding anti-trans attacks for political agendas that are dominating GOP platforms heading into 2024 elections.

Affirming healthcare can often include hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers, which are also often prescribed for cisgender or nontransgender youth, as well as social transitioning measures, mental healthcare, and affirming surgeries, which are not recommended under major medical guidelines for people under 18.

By the end of May, state lawmakers had introduced more than 500 bills impacting LGBT+ people in 2023, including 220 bills specifically targeting trans and nonbinary Americans, according to an analysis from the Human Rights Campaign. More than 70 such bills have been signed into law.

At least 19 states have enacted laws or policies banning affirming healthcare for young trans people, all against the guidance of health providers and major medical organisations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.