Racist and antisemitic tweets quickly spread on Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover of the company on Thursday, The Washington Post reported on Friday.
Musk closed the deal on his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter on Thursday night and reportedly fired CEO Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and other top Twitter executives.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist,” is expected to take a much laxer approach to content moderation than Twitter’s previous leadership. However, Musk told advertisers in a letter Thursday morning that the platform cannot become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
While Twitter has yet to announce any official changes to the site’s content moderation, users reportedly appeared emboldened to push the limits following the takeover, using racist, antisemitic and homophobic slurs.
Some users tweeted out entire posts that repeated one racial slur over and over in all caps, while others posted Nazi memes.
“Elon now controls twitter. Unleash the racial slurs,” one user wrote, according to the Post.
Amid the surge in racist, antisemitic and homophobic tweets, users also urged Musk to restore previously suspended accounts, such as those of former President Trump or right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. However, Trump said on Friday that he plans to stay on his own platform, Truth Social.
The Hill has reached out to Twitter for comment.