Elon Musk responds to LeBron James' tweet about 'scary AF' racial slurs on Twitter
Twitter says associated accounts are 'inauthentic,' part of 'trolling campaign' and will be banned
Elon Musk, the new "Chief Twit" at social media giant Twitter, has responded to LeBron James’ concerns about the reported sudden increase in racial slurs being posted on the social media platform.
Musk, who recently acquired Twitter in a $44 billion deal, replied to James on Sunday with a retweet of the response of the company’s head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth, regarding the reported surge in slurs and derogatory terms posted on the site.
Roth wrote that the increase came over the last 48 hours from "a small number" of accounts posting "a ton of tweets."
"More than 50,000 Tweets repeatedly using a particular slur came from just 300 accounts," Roth tweeted.
ELON MUSK CLOSES TWITTER DEAL: WHAT'S NEXT?
"Nearly all of these accounts are inauthentic," Roth continued. "We’ve taken action to ban the users involved in this trolling campaign — and are going to continue working to address this in the days to come to make Twitter safe and welcoming for everyone."
The NBA superstar had tweeted his concern over the reports on Saturday, writing that he hopes Musk and Twitter "take this very seriously."
On Friday, Musk reiterated that Twitter’s policies have yet to change since he took control, writing: "To be super clear, we have not yet made any changes to Twitter’s content moderation policies."
ELON MUSK FIRES TWITTER'S TOP BRASS AFTER CLOSING $44 BILLION DEAL: REPORTS
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE
The Network Contagion Research Institute says, "Evidence suggests that bad actors are trying to test the limits on @Twitter. Several posts on 4chan encourage users to amplify derogatory slurs."