Twitter trolls hit platform after Elon Musk's takeover

Following Elon Musk's takeover, Twitter has been the target of an organised trolling effort, with more than 50,000 tweets from 300 accounts deluging the service with offensive material.

The social media site claimed it has come under attack in an effort to lead users to believe that Twitter's content restrictions had changed or been relaxed since the firm was acquired by the richest man in the world for $44 billion (£38 billion) last week.

The head of safety and integrity at Twitter claimed that despite "an organised effort to make people think we have," the site's content regulations have not altered.

Yoel Roth said in a Sunday Twitter conversation that the business had seen a "tonne" of tweets from a select few accounts that contained slurs and other offensive languages. He claimed that just 300 accounts were responsible for more than 50,000 tweets that frequently used one vague slur. This served as an example of the scope of the attack.

The majority of those accounts, according to Roth, were "inauthentic," and the persons responsible had been barred.

“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,” he wrote.

Roth’s thread also linked to a post from Musk, who bought the platform last week, in which the Tesla chief executive said: “We have not yet made any changes to Twitter’s content moderation policies.”

With Musk now in charge, there have been many expressions of worry that the multi-billionaire, who calls himself a "free speech absolutist," will relax content guidelines and reinstate banned accounts like those run by the right-wing British political commentator Katie Hopkins and the former US president Donald Trump.

Grey's Anatomy and Bridgerton creator Shonda Rhimes, who has 1.9 million followers on Twitter, appeared to leave the platform on Saturday, informing her fans that she was "not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned."

Musk has announced the creation of a "content moderation council" and emphasised that Twitter's content regulations have not changed. According to him, the new council would bring "widely varied opinions" together, and no decisions regarding content policy or account reinstatements would be made prior to the council's meeting.

Musk has also suggested that Twitter may be divided into various sections where users can rate the content of their tweets and engage in online arguments in a designated area of the website.

After the deal, his suggested adjustments were apparent in conversations with Twitter users. He also agreed with a user's suggestion that the service be divided into various video game-like modes, such as a "player vs. player" variation where verified accounts may fight each other on Twitter.

According to the billionaire, who has more than 100 million followers on the website, users can choose a version of Twitter similar to how they would choose a movie based on its content classification.

He wrote: “Being able to select which version of Twitter you want is probably better, much as it would be for a movie maturity rating.”

Musk stated that a user's tweet's rating might be chosen by themself and thereafter "updated by user feedback."

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