Big tech still advertising on Twitter despite rise in hate speech – Axios

Illustration: Annelise Capossela/AxiosSeveral of the largest tech firms have remained among Twitter’s top advertisers this year — including Apple, Amazon and IBM — despite the rise in hate speech on the service as well as a wide range of incendiary tweets from owner Elon Musk.Why it matters: Musk’s project to remake Twitter into what he calls a free-speech zone, and what critics see as an increasingly toxic environment, will prosper or fail depending on the choices both advertisers and users make to stay or go.Driving the news: As early as December researchers documented a significant rise in hate speech on the site after Musk assumed ownership at the end of October.Twitter has also changed some of its policies since then, including eliminating the part of its hate speech rules that prohibited the targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender people.Musk himself has spread conspiracy theories and posted anti-transgender content while also engaging with accounts tied to hate speech. This week alone, Musk tweeted comments about George Soros that many saw as antisemitic. He also repeatedly questioned reports that the suspect in the Allen, Texas mall shooting earlier this month was a white supremacist — discounting as “psy-ops” credible reports (New York
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