Under Elon Musk's leadership, Twitter could become a 'supercharged engine of radicalization,' critics warn

• Elon Musk completed his long-awaited Twitter acquisition on Thursday, immediately firing executives.
• Critics fear the Tesla CEO, a self-styled free speech absolutist, will usher in more hate speech.

Elon Musk on Thursday completed his long-awaited $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, immediately firing top executives and prompting concern among critics who worry the self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" will usher in more extremism and hate speech onto the platform.

"Elon Musk's acquisition and subsequent running of Twitter will radically transform the current information landscape in much the same way that the emergence of Fox News changed the information landscape back in the late '90s — and we will all be worse off for it," Angelo Carusone, president of the left-leaning nonprofit media watchdog Media Matters for America, said in a statement, predicting the rise of right-wing extremism as a direct result of Musk's leadership.

Musk, who has maintained he is a "free speech absolutist" despite a professional reputation of silencing critics with retaliation and threats of lawsuits, has long denounced Twitter's content moderation policies. The new "Chief Twit" has publicly lambasted what he has suggested is partisan censorship on the platform, including the decision to ban former president Donald Trump — which Musk said in May he would reverse.

Lawmakers, media watchdogs, and advocacy groups have said for months that Musk's purchase of the platform would have immense consequences for data privacy, in addition to a rise in harassment, extremism, and hyperpartisanship, and have renewed their calls following Thursday's completion of the deal.

"Despite his claim that he wanted to buy Twitter to 'help humanity,' Elon Musk has a record of posting and defending harmful anti-LGBTQ content as well as content that harms other marginalized communities," read a statement by the nonprofit Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. "GLAAD remains deeply concerned about the safety of LGBTQ people on Twitter and we join other organizations that are now questioning Twitter's future policies and actions against extremist content."

Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of watchdog nonprofit Accountable Tech, said Musk's firing of Vijaya Gadde — a top Twitter legal and policy executive who headed the team that decided to remove Trump from the platform — was a "long-term catastrophe," calling Gadde the company's "moral compass," Politico reported.

While Musk did not respond to a request for comment for this story, a spokesperson for Twitter referred to two tweets posted by the new owner of the social platform about the future of content moderation.

On Thursday, Musk posted that most of the speculation surrounding his motivation to buy Twitter has been wrong and said the platform "obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences." Instead, he said, Twitter must follow "the laws of the land" and "be warm and welcoming to all," without specifying how to accomplish that goal.

Musk has not yet detailed any potential policy changes but, on Friday, tweeted that no content moderation policies have yet changed on the platform. In a separate tweet, he said a "content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints" will be convened before policy changes or account reinstatements are made.

In the meantime, a social media research group told The Washington Post that use of the N-word on Twitter jumped by almost 500% after the Musk takeover. Researchers from Memetica, a digital investigations company, also found a surge in Twitter accounts that followed right-wing media accounts like Tucker Carlon and One America News Network in the first 24 hours following the completed deal, The New York Times reported.

"Simply put: Twitter is now on a glide path to becoming a supercharged engine of radicalization," Carusone of Media Matters' statement added. "Under Musk's leadership, Twitter will become a fever swamp of dangerous conspiracy theories, partisan chicanery, and operationalized harassment."