Under the direction of Elon Musk, Twitter recently restored tens of thousands of accounts, some of which belonged to conspirators or opponents of vaccination, at the risk of reviving a phenomenon of misinformation on the social network.
According to developer Travis Brown, more than 27,000 restored accounts had been suspended for misinformation, harassment or hateful displays.
Contacted by Agence France-Presse, he claimed that his list was incomplete and that the number of accounts could be higher.
“Restoring these accounts will make the platform a magnet for people who want to spread false information,” said Jonathan Nagler, co-director of the Center on Social Media and Politics at New York University.
“And there will be less moderation of hate speech, which will make the network less hospitable for many users,” he adds.
“Antivax”, anti-Muslims, conspirators…
Among the personalities returning to the blue bird, “antivax” figures such as cardiologist Peter McCullough or even doctor Robert Malone, who had been suspended a year ago for having warned Internet users against the supposed dangerousnessCoronavirus vaccines without verified information.
Since lifting the suspension of his account, Robert Malone, who has more than 869,000 subscribers, has published several messages relaying false information about the vaccine against COVID-19.
Among the former outcasts allowed back on the social network is also former President Donald Trump, who is nevertheless, for now, sticking to his promise not to return and to only use the Truth Social social network, which he created himself last year.
Mike Lindell is one of those who have taken up the torch. Suspended twice in 2021, the CEO of the company My Pillow and unconditional supporter of Donald Trump asked, as soon as his account was restored, that “the electronic voting machines be melted down to make bars of jail “.
Also readmitted on Twitter is far-right activist Pamela Geller, presented by the legal organization for the fight against extremism Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the most flamboyant anti-Muslim activists in the United States”.
At the start of the week, Mr.me Geller posted about Muslim students who complained that a professor showed them depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.
“Have they beheaded him yet?” “ she wrote on Twitter, in reference to the murder of professor Samuel Paty, committed in the suburbs of Paris in October 2020.
“In the Musk era, ‘superspreaders’ of disinformation feel emboldened and readers have less evidence about the reliability of sources,” said Jack Brewster of the NewsGuard media observatory.
In mid-December, Twitter had indicated that a “permanent suspension was a disproportionate measure for a violation of the rules” of the social network. Elon Musk then clarified that Twitter “remains committed to preventing the presence of dangerous content” on its site.