Elon Musk’s Twitter will not censor or encourage hate speech

Twitter on Saturday unveiled new rules for dealing with hate speech, part of new owner Elon Musk’s vow to make the social media giant a transparent bastion of free speech.

“People still see swear words in tweets when they follow an account that uses them.” according to a post from the official Twitter Safety account. “However, we will not amplify tweets that contain slurs or hate speech, and we will not run ads alongside those tweets.”

The account stated that blanket removal or suppression of tweets containing hateful comments is not an option.

“Context is important, and not all occurrences of profanity are used in a hateful manner,” the anonymous official wrote. “Slur words can be used in counterspeech, recovered phrases, and song lyrics, for example.”

The account also published two charts showing that Twitter is keeping a close eye on the use of English-language swear words on a daily basis — and claimed to reveal the stats “a steady downward trend in impressions of genuine hateful language” on the platform since Musk completed his purchase in October.

On Thursday, California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said he was demanding “action” from Twitter, claiming that hate speech there had skyrocketed since the world’s richest man took the reins.

musk denied the accusation — and slammed a “community note” against Schiff’s claim on the tweet in which it was made.

Musk’s ongoing “Twitter Files” threads have uncovered numerous instances of alleged viewpoint-based censorship by the platform’s past leaders.