Hundreds of accounts recently reinstated on Twitter spread hate or misinformation and carried out abuse, a BBC investigation has found.
In an exclusive investigation, BBC Monitoring analyzed more than 1.100 banned Twitter accounts that were brought back under new owner Elon Musk.
More than a third post problematic content on the platform - most of them since it returned.
Musk claims to be an "absolutist of freedom of speech".
In November, Musk announced a "general amnesty" for suspended accounts that "did not break the law or engage in mass spamming."
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Twitter's rules prohibit violence, direct attacks and threats directed at others based on, for example, race, sexual orientation or gender, as well as defamation, tropes or other content intended to "dehumanize, degrade or encourage negative or harmful stereotypes".
The platform also claims to have a "zero tolerance policy" towards any material that contains or promotes child sexual abuse.
However, our research shows that a large number of returned orders violate these very regulations.
- Nearly 190 accounts in our data set promoted hatred and violence, including descriptions of rape as well as abuse of women and members of the LGBT community.
- We also found a small number of accounts that contained drawings showing the sexual abuse of children
- Additionally, we discovered more than 270 accounts that were spreading misinformation, mostly about elections and covid vaccines. However, not all such content violated existing Twitter policies
We limited our data set to accounts returned between October 27, 2022 — Musk's first day in office — and January 10, including only profiles with more than 10.000 followers.
These accounts are just a fraction of the thousands of accounts that have been returned to Twitter in recent months.
To identify problematic content, we used a combination of keyword searches and manual analysis of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of posts from each of the accounts in our data set.
Wherever possible, we have provided known reasons for previous account suspensions.
So, what kind of accounts came back from Twitter's prison?
Many faces of hate
Among the returnees to Twitter in our dataset were accounts with a history of making misogynistic comments.
One well known to everyone was Andrew Tate, an online influencer who previously stated that women must bear some of the responsibility for being raped.
He is currently in custody in Romania as part of a human trafficking and rape investigation.
Since being reinstated, his follower count has skyrocketed - from 150.000 in November 2022 to five million now.
Among some lesser-known users who promote misogyny was one who stated that he knows a woman "doesn't mind" when he wants to beat her up.
Another, after being allowed to return, posted a video of the rape.
A group that is persistently targeted is the LGBT community.
We've seen tweets disparagingly calling them "sick people", "groomers" and "pedophiles".
Imran Ahmed, of the Center to Combat Digital Hate (CCDH), says his organization has seen an increase in hateful terminology against women and LGBT groups since Musk took over Twitter, as well as racist slurs.
He claims that without adequately vetting all suspended accounts before allowing them to return to Twitter, "what Musk did was effectively turn off the fire hose, allowing hate and misinformation to flood the entire platform."
Perhaps most troubling in this investigation were two accounts with images of child sexual abuse.
These were not real life photos, but drawings.
We reported this content to Twitter, which has since suspended one account and removed the problematic image from another.
But in the last few days, we found and reported another account on the Twitter site that posted very similar images.
At the time of writing, that account was still active.
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Povratak those who denied the legality of the election
More than a hundred accounts in our data set spread false and misleading claims about the election and its outcome.
For example, some users falsely claimed that former president Jair Bolsonaro won both rounds of the presidential election in Brazil.
Others have wrongly claimed that Donald Trump "handsomely won" the 2020 US presidential election.
Some of Trump's followers even celebrated his return to Twitter with posts repeating false claims about the election results.
Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow and one of the biggest proponents of the bogus theory that the 2020 election was stolen, tweeted: “I'm back!! Thanks @elonmusk and by the way let's melt down the electronic voting machines and turn them into prison bars!".
Twitter says it may flag or remove false or misleading information about the election and its outcome.
At the time of writing, we have not seen any posts spreading such claims about the election have been flagged.
Watch the video:
False vaccine claims are not verified
In November, Twitter stopped enforcing its own policy on covid misinformation, allowing the return of some prominent spreaders of coronavirus myths and vaccine misinformation.
Among them was Dr. Robert Malone, who made misleading claims questioning the effectiveness and safety of covid vaccines, as well as cardiologist Peter McCalla, who spread false claims that covid vaccines kill large numbers of people.
Evidence from various independent scientists from all over the world, as well as the experiences of more than five billion people, have shown that covid vaccines are safe and effective, and that serious side effects are rare.
We've also come across a number of posts that unfoundedly link people's "sudden deaths" to vaccines, and in at least one case this has led to the upsetting of a grieving parent.
Most of the returned accounts in our data set did not promote outright misinformation or hateful content.
Sometimes it wasn't even clear why the account was suspended in the first place.
Then again, for some others, the pardon seemed like a new opportunity for them to repeat the very kind of behavior that first got them banned.
At the time of writing, just over a dozen accounts from our data set of over 1.000 have been independently suspended again.
We've reached out to Twitter for comment, but have not heard back.
Lead Investigator: Kaylin Devlin
Research and Analysis: Kaylin Devlin, Adam Robinson, Olga Robinson, Alistair Coleman, Paul Brown and Sheyen Sardarizadeh
Illustrations: Jenny Lowe
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