“The Jews” is trending on Twitter, and its algorithm has selected Ye as a “Top” person to follow while Elon Musk fires roughly half of the company’s staff, including many of its policy experts and content moderators. Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, recently had his Twitter access limited after saying he would go “death con 3” on “JEWISH PEOPLE,” and has been dropped by the vast majority of his business partners after repeatedly making blatantly antisemitic comments over the last few weeks. The freeze on Ye's account has since been lifted.
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"#IStandWithKyrie" is also trending, a reference to Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, who recently recommended that people watch an antisemitic documentary and was suspended for five games after declining to apologize and evasively answering a question on whether he holds "anti-semitic beliefs."
Twitter's content moderation has always been something of a disaster, and harmful things end up trending all the time. Twitter's content moderation has always relied more heavily on algorithms than competitors like Facebook do. In any case, Musk has promised to protect the values of "freedom of speech"—with the company now running with thousands fewer employees after mass layoffs. This may well be a window into what that looks like. In an email sent Thursday to all Twitter staff, the company said it would be notifying all employees about whether they would be laid off by 9 a.m. PST on Friday via email. All employees are receiving an email with the subject line “Your Role at Twitter.” If they are keeping their job, the email will go to their @twitter.com email address; if they’re being laid off, it will go to their personal email address.
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Twitter's content moderation has always been something of a disaster, and harmful things end up trending all the time. Twitter's content moderation has always relied more heavily on algorithms than competitors like Facebook do. In any case, Musk has promised to protect the values of "freedom of speech"—with the company now running with thousands fewer employees after mass layoffs. This may well be a window into what that looks like. In an email sent Thursday to all Twitter staff, the company said it would be notifying all employees about whether they would be laid off by 9 a.m. PST on Friday via email. All employees are receiving an email with the subject line “Your Role at Twitter.” If they are keeping their job, the email will go to their @twitter.com email address; if they’re being laid off, it will go to their personal email address. 