Still, researchers say they cannot draw firm conclusions about a cause-effect relationship between Musk’s purchase of X and their findings. A spike occurred just before the SpaceX founder’s purchase and continued through May 2023, California researchers announced Wednesday. The jump comes with Musk’s own right-turn in politics as he has become a staunch backer of President Donald Trump. The authors of the study published in the journal PLOS One said this increase in engagement suggests that more people were exposed to hate speech.
![[Researchers say they cannot draw firm conclusions about a cause-effect relationship between Musk’s purchase of X and their findings. However, they said more research is necessary to further reveal the nature of similar activity on other major social media platforms]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/02/12/19/29/journal-pone-0313293-g003.jpeg)
“These findings,” U.C. Berkeley’s Daniel Hickey and his co-authors said of their new study, “do not support public claims from X that exposure to hate speech decreased after Musk’s purchase.”. A request for comment from X was not immediately returned. While information on specific internal changes at the company is limited and the researchers noted they could not draw firm conclusions about a cause-effect relationship between Musk’s purchase of X and their findings, they called for increased moderation on X.
They said more research is needed to further expose the nature of activity across social media platforms. The researchers highlighted that previous studies have tied hate speech to offline hate crimes. They also pointed out bots can promote misinformation and cause harm like interfering with elections or hampering public health campaigns. “The policies to reduce exposure to harmful content appear not to be sufficiently effective,” they said.
