A violent attack on US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband has sparked global headlines, drawing correlations with the January 6 riots and raising concerns about right-wing domestic extremism in the United States.
Police in San Francisco allege a 42-year-old man broke into the Pelosi family home and confronted Paul Pelosi, saying "where is Nancy?" before a struggle ensued over a hammer.
Mr Pelosi was hospitalised and underwent surgery for a fractured skull after the attack, which also left him with injuries to his arms.
High-profile Americans have condemned the attack, but Tesla founder Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, took a different approach in a now-deleted tweet.
What did the deleted tweet say?
Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton had shared a tweet blaming the attack on hateful Republican rhetoric and linked to an LA Times story about how the suspect promoted far-right conspiracy theories online.
Musk responded to that tweet by saying "there is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye", and linked to a Santa Monica Observer article making unfounded allegations about Mr Pelosi.
Fact-checkers have described the Santa Monica Observer as a purveyor of hoaxes, including a theory that Clinton herself had died and been replaced by a body double.
Musk's tweet prompted fresh concerns about how he will handle hate speech and misinformation on the social media platform, particularly ahead of next week's midterm elections in the US.
What was the reaction?
Some people have demanded Musk apologise for the tweet, but others have accused him of "caving to the leftist mob", among other things, by removing it.
Screenshots taken before the tweet was deleted showed that Musk's reply to Clinton had been liked and retweeted tens of thousands of times.
At time of publication of this article, the only acknowledgement Musk had made about the tweet — or the decision to delete it — was to post this dig at the New York Times:
Associate Professor Diana Bossio — from Swinburne University of Technology's department of media and communications — says the real reactions to this incident and to Musk's takeover of Twitter more broadly will be revealed in who decides to leave the platform and what they use instead.
"[It's] just classic trolling by someone who has something to gain by influencing US politics," Dr Bossio says.
"The question is: Who do we want controlling our public squares — and if these are spaces dictated by investors and owners, are they really for the public?
"I think a lot of Silicon Valley-style innovation culture has suggested that these platforms are 'for the people' and that platform creators can be trusted to work in the service of democratic ideals of free speech — but deals like Musk’s Twitter takeover show that this is not always the case."
Is this a sign of what's to come for moderation on Twitter?
Musk earlier announced a content moderation council with "widely diverse viewpoints" will be appointed, but that "no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes".
That update comes amid discussion about the possible reinstatement of former US president Donald Trump's Twitter account, which was permanently disabled after the Capitol riots.
Dr Bossio — who is Swinburne's Social Media Research Group lead — says Musk's announcements get people talking, but there's still a lot of missing information about how things will look when his changes are made.
"I think Twitter actually does need to take more action, not less, on content moderation that fights hate speech and disinformation," she says.
"We've seen, just in the last 24 hours, troll accounts trying to test the limits of a Musk-run Twitter by flooding the platform with racial slurs.
"Twitter hasn’t changed its policies on hate speech and probably won’t, so I don’t think it’s going to immediately descend into the bin fire that some people are predicting.
"I think Musk might find it a little harder to balance his ideas of free speech with the increasingly regulatory environments being legislated by governments, and the rapid migration of younger users away from platforms like Facebook and Twitter."
What else has happened since Musk took over?
Musk immediately fired multiple top Twitter executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, as soon as his multi-billion-dollar acquisition of the social media company was complete.
That was four days ago.
On Sunday, local time, the "Chief Twit" said that the social media platform's "whole verification process is being revamped right now", but there has been limited detail about what could end up changing.
Technology newsletter Platformer has reported that Twitter is considering charging for verification (or blue ticks), meaning users would have to subscribe to Twitter Blue at $US4.99 a month or lose their "verified" badges if the project moves forward.
ABC/wires
