If Elon Musk didn't own Twitter, would anybody pay any attention to what the embattled world's richest man has to say about race?
Last Sunday, Musk tweeted that “the media” and “elite colleges and high schools” of being “racist” against white and Asian people.
The CEO of Twitter, Tesla and Space X wrote, “The media is racist.” He then added, “For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians. Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist.”
Musk provided no evidence to back up his view. His statement came in a screed defending Scott Adams, the creator of comic strip Dilbert, which has been dropped by a number US newspapers because of Adam's racist views, specifically against Blacks.
Brian Levin, a civil rights attorney and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University said, in response to Musk’s tweets told CNBC:
“Systemic racism requires not only widespread bigotry to be held within a group but also a structural component that allows discrimination and oppression to be imposed on a minority because of an advantage of access and power. A white billionaire from South Africa who recently lost a high profile racial discrimination case may not be in the best position to offer counsel.”
Tesla is being sued by the California Civil Rights for alleged bias against Black workers and is being investigated by the EEOC, the federal agency responsible for enforcing civil rights laws against workplace discrimination.
Since Musk took over Twitter, besides restoring Donald Trump's account, who was banned by Twitter in 2021 for allegedly advocating violence and accused of spreading misinformation.
Trump's reinstatement got the headlines in the US, but overall, hate speech has soared on the social media platform and has reopened the platform to international terrorist groups to spread misinformation and to recruit, according to the New York Times.
The increase in hate postings in such a short time is alarming, say researchers.
“Elon Musk sent up the Bat Signal to every kind of racist, misogynist and homophobe that Twitter was open for business,” said Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. “They have reacted accordingly.”
YELP'S ANTI-ASIAN REVIEWS
Twitter is not the only social media platform seeing a rise in hate.
Last year, Yelp, known for its customer-written restaurant reviews, removed more than 2,000 racist business reviews before they went online — a nearly tenfold jump over 2021.
More specifically, much of the hate appeared to target Asian-owned restaurants and businesses. In 2021, Yelp proactively removed only nine posts that included anti-Asian hate. In 2022, it removed 475.
The sharp increase in Yelp's hate reviews perhaps reflects improved efforts by the platform to combat racist content and shows how even a non-political site known primarily for reviews of restaurants and repair services can be twisted into a weapon to further inflame those prone to hate Asians and hurt the Asian and Asian American entrepreneurs.
Yelp began tracking the hate-inspired reviews in in 2020, just prior to the surge of anti-Asian attacks and harassment, which AANHPI community advocates attribute was inspired by the anti-Chinese rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration.
Therefore, the increase in racist restaurant reviews isn’t surprising, according to University of Michigan marketing professor Justin Huang, told KTLA, a Los Angeles radio station. He recently authored a study that found Asian restaurants saw an 18% drop in customers compared with non-Asian restaurants in the same communities in 2020, equating to more than $7 billion in lost revenue.
In total, Yelp said, it removed 26,500 business reviews last year that violated its rules about hate speech, threats or lewdness, an overall increase of 1,300 over the year before.
Noorie Malik, Yelp’s vice president of user operations, that the company is “aggressive” when it comes to taking down “unreliable” reviews, including those that contain hate speech.
“The trust and safety of the Yelp community is a top priority,” Malik wrote in a statement emailed to the AP. “Which is why we continue to heavily invest in both technology and human moderation.”
SPREAD OF ONLINE HATE
Hate speech incites violence and intolerance. The devastating effect of hatred is sadly nothing new. However, its scale and impact are now amplified by online social media platforms. Hate speech – including online – has become one of the most common ways of spreading divisive rhetoric on a global scale, threatening peace around the world, according to a United Nations report on Hate Speech.
The explosion of hate speech, further exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, represents an unprecedented challenge for our societies, says the UN report. "Although hate speech has always existed, its ever-growing impact fueled by digital communication can be devastating not only for those targeted, but also for societies at large."
 |
Yelp's actions against hate contrasts with the policies of Twitter's Musk, who fancies himself as a free speech champion.
The UN's High Commissioner Volker Türk who heads up Office of the High Scommissioner of Human Rights, had recently penned an open letter to Musk, emphasized that free speech did not mean “a free pass to spread harmful disinformation that results in real world harms."
Volker writes that human rights law is clear: "Freedom of expression stops at hatred that incites discrimination, hostility or violence. We see too often that the spread of hatred and hate speech against people of African descent, and other groups, not only undermines their rights but creates major fissures in societies. These are increasingly difficult to overcome and a source of various forms of destabilisation within countries.”
In a detailed statement, more than two dozen UN-appointed independent human rights experts - including representatives from three different working groups and multiple Special Rapporteurs - called out chief executives of social media companies by name, saying that the companies they lead “must urgently address posts and activities that advocate hatred, and constitute incitement to discrimination, in line with international standards for freedom of expression.
READ the United Nations report on Hate Speech
The experts consulted by the UN say that allowing and tolerating incitement to hatred and expression, or advocacy of hatred against ... marginalized groups, “not only encourages the perpetrators, but also constitutes a continuous source of chronic race-based traumatic stress and trauma.”
The presence of racial hatred further undermines confidence on the part of those impacted, in using social media and seeking justice.
“It is especially alarming” considering that so many youngsters “live a significant part of their lives” online, they added.
In the letter addressed to Twitter's Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, who heads Google’s parent company Alphabet, Apple’s Tim Cook, “and CEOs of other social media platforms”, should “centre human rights, racial justice, accountability, transparency, corporate social responsibility and ethics, in their business model.”
The letter continued, “We urge all CEOs and leaders of social media to fully assume their responsibility to respect human rights and address racial hatred.”
United Nations report on Hate Speech
.
No comments:
Post a Comment