Posting a swastika managed to get "Ye" re-suspended from the social media platform.
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Kanye West — now known as Ye — has once again been kicked off Twitter after posting a swastika inside a Star of David.
And according to new research, hate speech has been surging on the social network since it was bought by Elon Musk for $44 billion.
A study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that the use of slurs targeting black people tripled in the two weeks after the takeover. Beyond that, slurs against gay men and antisemetic posts were both up about 60%.
"Elon Musk sent up the Bat Signal to every kind of racist, misogynist and homophobe that Twitter was open for business," said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. "They have reacted accordingly."
The report comes a week after Musk congratulated his dramatically downsized content moderation staff after hate speech impressions — meaning the number of people who viewed tweets, not made them — was down by a third.
Ahmed called that disingenuous, saying:
"Elon Musk has again been exposed as misleading users and advertisers, claiming mission accomplished despite his clear failure to meet his own self-proclaimed standards to clamp down on vicious bigotry. Community standards ensure users feel welcome and advertisers' brands are safe."
That latter one, advertisers, is the group that Musk seems to be paying most attention to.
Companies like GM, Volkswagen and Audi, as well as Pfizer, General Mills and Oreo-maker Mondelez and especially Apple have pulled or suspended advertising since Musk — a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" — took over and began restoring, or at least announcing that he planned to restore, banned accounts.
Among those restored were former president Donald Trump and Ye, although Musk claimed that the decision to end West's suspension was made before he took over.
The advertising pullbacks by brands concerned their marketing messages would appear alongside have provoked an angry response from Musk who threatened a "thermonuclear name and shame" against firms that withdrew ads — because threatening to nuke worried customers is a well known way of retaining business.
Apple drew the hottest response from Musk who tweeted "Do they hate free speech in America?"
A potentially far larger problem is that Apple had allegedly been warning Twitter that its app could be pulled from the App Store for violating "appropriate content" standards — effectively booting future versions off 1.2 billion iPhones.
As for Ye, his plans to buy the far right's favorite Twitter competitor Parler fell through, so the Twitter suspension could cut into his trolling bandwidth.
