LeBron James reacted to a report of increased usage of the n-word on Twitter, Saturday, in the wake of Elon Musk taking over the social media platform. The Los Angeles Lakers star says that he doesn't know Musk, but that he hopes someone takes care of the problem of hate speech on the platform.
"I dont know Elon Musk and, tbh, I could care less who owns Twitter," James tweeted to his 52 million followers on the site. "But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously because this is scary AF. So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech."
For the report, the Washington Post cited data shared by the Network Contagion Research Institute. The independent organization says that its mission is to track, expose, and combat disinformation and deception across social media.
The study shows that posts containing the n-word have increased nearly 500% from the previous average in the last 12 hours. The post was published on the morning of October 28th.
Musk moved forward with purchasing Twitter for $44 billion, earlier this week. He explained the decision in a statement posted on the site.
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” he wrote. “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”
Musk also announced that he'll be forming a “content moderation council” to overview content on Twitter.
Check out James' recent tweet below.
[Via]