Twitter owner Elon Musk is doubling down on his platform being the destination for free speech, “laughs,” and “some negative stuff too” as Mark Zuckerberg’s “friendly” Threads becomes the fastest-growing app of all time.
“You will get more laughs from this app than everything else combined,” Musk tweeted as Threads reached 100 million users in record time over the weekend. “But I have to warn you … don’t be shocked … there’s some negative stuff too,” the billionaire added with a hint of satire.
You will get more laughs from this app than everything else combined
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2023
But I have to warn you … don’t be shocked … there’s some negative stuff too
His comments come as Meta’s Zuckerberg has been positioning his new app as a friendlier alternative to Twitter since its launch last week.
The Facebook founder declared—in a series of posts on Threads, of course—that his app will be a kinder space than its rival Twitter, which has become more accepting of extreme views since the Tesla boss acquired it.
“The goal is to keep it friendly as it expands. I think it’s possible and will ultimately be the key to its success,” he wrote. “That’s one reason why Twitter never succeeded as much as I think it should have, and we want to do it differently.”
“It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram,” Musk hit back at the time.
On Twitter, everyone's voice matters.
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) July 6, 2023
Whether you’re here to watch history unfold, discover REAL-TIME information all over the world, share your opinions, or learn about others -- on Twitter YOU can be real.
YOU built the Twitter community. 🙏👏 And that's irreplaceable. This…
Even Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino came to the platform’s defense to call out imitators of the text-based platform. “On Twitter, everyone’s voice matters,” she tweeted. “We’re often imitated—but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.”
Threads as threat to Twitter
Whether or not the Twitter community can be duplicated is yet to be seen, but it’s clear that a record number of people—including a number of right-wing figures—are flocking to see what all the fuss is about on Threads.
In just seven hours, the new but familiar app, which joins WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook under the Meta umbrella, received 10 million signups. Within 24 hours of its release, 30 million people had a Threads account.
This morning, Threads crossed the 100 million signup marker, making it the quickest app to do so, beating ChatGPT to the top spot. In comparison, the A.I. large language model took a whole two months to accomplish the same feat.
And although several rivals have emerged to give Twitter a run for its money since Musk acquired the platform for $44 billion in October, none have caught on like this—which may in part explain the electric vehicle mogul's strong pushback against the new app.
Twitter’s hate speech problem
Musk and his new CEO Yaccarino have doubled down on their vision for Twitter 2.0 to be the place where everyone can enjoy the freedom to speak their mind—but in the process this has allowed it to become a kind of hotbed of hate speech.
Have you ever been talking with someone particularly insightful and thought, you should have the freedom to speak your mind. We all should.
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) June 12, 2023
Enter Twitter 2.0.
In one example, Twitter is currently facing a lawsuit for failing to take down a series of anti-Semitic tweets earlier this year.
According to the landmark legal challenge, despite being alerted to six anti-Semitic or otherwise racist tweets in January by researchers at HateAid, a German organization that campaigns for human rights in the digital space, and the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS), the social media giant did not remove them from its platform, contravening its own moderation policy.
Four of the tweets explicitly denied the Holocaust; one said “Blacks should be gassed and sent with space x to Mars”; a sixth compared COVID vaccination programs to mass extermination in Nazi death camps. But Twitter reportedly ruled that three of the tweets did not violate its guidelines and failed to respond to the other reports.
HateAid and the EUJS applied earlier this year to a Berlin court to have the tweets deleted, arguing the tweets broke German law and that Twitter had failed to meet contractual obligations to provide a secure and safe environment for its users.
The rise in controversial tweets and hate speech on the platform is not surprising given “free speech absolutist” Musk’s decision to cut back on content moderation, dissolve Twitter's independent Trust and Safety Council, and restore the suspended accounts of extreme users.
Since the company’s takeover by Musk, the volume of English-language anti-Semitic tweets has more than doubled, according to research published by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
Musk has said that allegations of increased hate speech were “utterly false” and that “hate speech impressions” had dramatically fallen on the platform since he took over. But according to Zuckerberg, who is capitalizing on Twitter’s mishaps, it’s one of the reasons why Twitter hasn’t reached its full potential.
Twitter responded to Fortune’s request for comment with its customary poop emoji.
