Twitter is amplifying hate speech in its “For You” timeline, an unintended side effect of an algorithm that is supposed to show users more of what they want.
According to a Washington Post analysis of Twitter’s recommendation algorithm, accounts that followed “extremists” — hate-promoting accounts identified in a list provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center — were subjected to a mix of other racist and incendiary speech. That included tweets from a self-proclaimed Nazi, for example, a user the account did not follow.
Many were from users previously suspended by Twitter and let back on by new owner Elon Musk, who pledged to de-boost hate speech following his takeover of the site.
The tweets appeared on Twitter’s new “For You” page, which the company unveiled in January as part of Musk’s redesigned site. Twitter says the timeline includes “suggested content powered by a variety of signals,” including “how popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with it.”
In one instance, after an account created by The Post followed dozens of others labeled as extremist, Twitter inserted a quote and a portrait of Adolf Hitler — from a user the account did not follow — into its timeline.
In November, Musk — who had recently purchased the site for $44 billion — announced a policy of restoring previously banned accounts after saying earlier that the site had a new rule.
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” he tweeted. He said that negative and hateful tweets would be deboosted and would not be monetized.
“You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different than the rest of the internet,” he wrote.
But according to The Post’s experiment, Twitter is amplifying hateful tweets.
Twitter and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
Twitter is in the midst of changing its curated feed and plans to make public its algorithm for recommending tweets at the end of this month, according to Musk.
The site was also set to implement a new “freedom of speech but not freedom of reach” policy before the end of this month, according to reporting from the news site Platformer. The policy appeared to be geared toward fulfilling Musk’s November promise to de-boost hateful content. It was not clear what direct changes Musk had made in the intervening months to fulfill his pledge.
But on a webpage explaining the “For You” timeline, Twitter wrote: “We recommend Tweets to you based on who you already follow and Topics you follow, and don’t recommend content that might be abusive or spammy.”
And this week, Musk said that beginning April 15, only “verified” users — those paying $8 a month for a Twitter subscription — will populate the “For You” feed, though he later clarified that accounts followed by the user will also appear in it.