American basketball star LeBron James has spoken out after a report found racist slurs on Twitter had surged in the first few hours since Elon Musk bought the social media site for £38bn.
The Network Contagion Research Institute - a research group that analyses social media content to predict emerging threats - said that use of the N-word on Twitter had increased by nearly 500% in the 12 hours immediately after Mr Musk's deal was finalised.
Some users were actively seen rejoicing in the deal, with one saying they could "freely express how much they hate n*****s now, thank you Elon" while others were seen encouraging others to "unleash the racial slurs" against black and Jewish people.
Mr James who has more than 52.3million Twitter followers, responded to the story in the Washington Post, with a tweet that read: "I don't know Elon Musk and, tbh, I could care less who owns twitter.
"But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously because this is scary AF.
"So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech."
Mr Musk, who now calls himself 'chief twit', has since responded to Mr James' tweet by linking to a message from Twitter's head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth.
He said: "Nearly all of these accounts are inauthentic.
"We’ve taken action to ban the users involved in this trolling campaign — and are going to continue working to address this in the days to come to make Twitter safe and welcoming for everyone."
Earlier Mr Roth had said: "Let’s talk for a minute about slurs, hateful conduct, and trolling campaigns.
"Bottom line up front: Twitter’s policies haven’t changed.
"Hateful conduct has no place here. And we’re taking steps to put a stop to an organised effort to make people think we have."
He added: "Over the last 48 hours, we’ve seen a small number of accounts post a ton of Tweets that include slurs and other derogatory terms.
"To give you a sense of scale: More than 50,000 Tweets repeatedly using a particular slur came from just 300 accounts."
