Ever since Elon Musk closed a $44 billion deal on Twitter on Thursday (Oct. 27), the platform has been inundated with racial epithets — and the rise in N-word usage is disturbing, to say the least.
Just 12 hours after Musk’s Twitter acquisition, a report from the Network Contagion Research Institute found that the use of the N-word “has increased nearly 500 percent from the previous average,” according to The Washington Post.
The NCRI also found that the barrage of racially derogatory tweets like the N-word has been from anonymous trolls looking to “test the limits” of Twitter since Musk’s purchase with users on 4chan encouraging others to “amplify derogatory slurs” — all in the name of “free speech.”
“I can freely express how much I hate n*****s … now, thank you elon,” one anonymous user tweeted, according to The Post. Another tweet laced with racist, antisemitic slurs read, “Elon now controls twitter. Unleash the racial slurs. K***S AND N*****S.”