Democratic Representative from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recently posted on Twitter about her increasing experience of harassment on the platform and expressed dissatisfaction towards Twitter’s Safety measures.
In her tweet, she expressed, “I am witnessing an unprecedented level of harassment here more than ever before. It appears people are paying to gain more visibility for their harassment. The absence of verification for journalists, civic organizations, and public figures has made following dialogues a challenge. I wish this platform could return to being useful,” as a response to a post from Twitter Safety.
Twitter Safety announced a collaboration with Sprinklr to help “identify, quantify, and diminish hate speech” on the platform.
The tweet from Twitter Safety read: “Sprinklr’s independent model reveals that the scope of daily English-language hate speech exposure is actually less than Twitter’s own model predicts. Sprinklr puts the daily average at 0.003%, in contrast to Twitter’s 0.012% projection, for the period between January 1, 2023, to May 31, 2023. Additionally, our calculations show that the exposure to hate speech has fallen by an average of 30% compared to the pre-acquisition period.”
Twitter Safety further mentioned the expansion of their “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach policy enforcement” that significantly decreases the visibility of harmful content, and noted that the data indicates a “continued improvement.”
Recently, Ocasio-Cortez has been critical of a fake account mimicking her and accused Elon Musk, Twitter’s CEO, of promoting the account.
In a post in May, AOC shared, “Just so you know, there’s an imposter account gaining traction on here pretending to be me.”
She added, “The CEO of Twitter has interacted with it, thereby enhancing its visibility. It’s propagating false policy statements and gaining traction. My team and I are evaluating how to address this. Until then, please be wary of the content you come across.”
Twitter’s help center clarified that if an account mentions “parody” in its username and bio, it does not contravene the platform’s user guidelines.
The mock account, while using the same profile picture as the congresswoman, clearly states that it isn’t AOC, operating under the moniker “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Press Release (parody).”
There have been several instances of friction between Ocasio-Cortez and Musk ever since the latter acquired Twitter.
