Tens of thousands of accounts have been reinstated on Twitter. Many of them have used the platform to spread conspiracy theories and disinformation.
Under the leadership of Elon Musk, Twitter has recently restored tens of thousands of accounts, some of which belonged to conspirators or opponents of vaccination, with the risk of reviving a phenomenon of disinformation on the social network.
According to developer Travis Brown cited by several organizations, more than 27,000 restored accounts had been suspended for reasons of misinformation, harassment and hate speech. Contacted by AFP, he said his list was incomplete and that the number of such accounts could be higher.
“Less restraint than hate speech”
“The recovery of these accounts will make the platform a magnet for actors who want to spread false information,” warns Jonathan Nagler, co-director of NYU’s Center on Social Media and Politics.
“And there will be less hate speech moderation, which will make the network less hospitable for many users,” he adds.
Among the personalities who return to the bluebird, “antivax” figures such as cardiologist Peter McCullough or Dr. Robert Malone, who was suspended a year ago for warning about the alleged dangerousness of coronavirus vaccines, without verified information support.
Since lifting his account suspension, Robert Malone, who has more than 869,000 subscribers, has posted several messages broadcasting false information about the Covid-19 vaccine.
Among the former outcasts re-authorized on the social network there is also former President Donald Trump, who, however, keeps, for the moment, his promise not to return and to use only the social network Truth Social, which he himself created last year.
Questioning the 2020 US ballot
Mike Lindell is one of those who picked up the torch. Suspended twice in 2021, the CEO of the company My Pillow and a staunch supporter of Donald Trump called, as soon as his account was reinstated, to “melt electronic voting machines into prison bars” .
A direct reference to the conspiracy theory that the counting of votes in the 2020 presidential election was manipulated with the help of voting machines, which has never been proven.
Far-right activist Pamela Geller was also readmitted on Twitter, presented by the legal organization for the fight against extremism Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the most flamboyant anti-Muslim activists in the United States”.
Earlier this week, the creator of the site The Geller Report posted a message about Muslim students who had complained that a professor had shown them pictures of the Prophet Muhammad.
“Have they beheaded him yet?” he tweeted, referring to the murder of French history and geography professor Samuel Paty in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the suburbs of Paris, in October 2020.
“Under the Musk era, ‘superspreaders’ of disinformation feel emboldened and readers have less evidence that sources are trustworthy,” said Jack Brewster of NewsGuard’s media observatory.
“Determined to prevent dangerous content”
In mid-December, Twitter said in a post on its platform that a “permanent suspension was a disproportionate measure to break the rules” of the social network.
Elon Musk then clarified that Twitter “remains committed to preventing dangerous content” on its site, as well as “malicious actors”. “Accounts restored must always follow our rules.”
Twitter was defaulted this week after the incident involving a player on the Buffalo Bills football team, Damar Hamlin. The 24-year-old defender’s cardiac arrest on Monday after an on-field tremor was an opportunity for many Twitter users to make a connection to the coronavirus vaccine.
“Before the Covid vaccines, you didn’t see athletes falling hard on the field like they do today,” Republican House of Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted. “It’s time to investigate Covid vaccines.”
While Elon Musk recently indicated he intends to hand over management of Twitter, “it will take more to fix” the platform, warns Nora Benavidez, of the Free Press media watchdog.
It will be necessary, he warns, to take “a series of measures to reverse Musk’s changes, reinvest moderately and restructure the governance of the platform”.
