Here’s how Twitter and Elon Musk can prevent racist ‘raids’ on the social network

Published

3 years ago

November 3, 2022

admin

In this photo illustration, the image of Elon Musk is displayed on a computer screen and the logo of twitter on a mobile phone in Ankara, Turkiye on October 06, 2022.

Muhammed Selim Korkutata | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

When Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took over at Twitter, showing up at headquarters on Oct. 27, 2022, online trolls and bigots raided the social network, polluting it with a deluge of racist epithets and other hate speech.

But a new study from the non-profit Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and Rutgers finds that Twitter’s safety team responded better to that “raid” than the company did to a similar event in April 2022.

According to NCRI’s CEO Adam Sohn, a raid is when bad actors online engage in coordinated activity to try to disrupt social media platforms, usually to harm marginalized people or specific targets.

GamerGate is probably the most infamous raid, and took place around 2014 when 4Chan trolls who were a part of the video game community lobbed misogynistic attacks against women who were in the industry. They specifically targeted one woman and critic who had spoken out about sexist tropes in games. Their campaign was waged across myriad social platforms including Twitter and Reddit, and manifested in real world rape and death threats, and a bomb scare targeting the critic.

Conspiracy-driven communities online are also known to use raid tactics.

Some people engage in so-called “inauthentic” activity on social networks just to see if they can get away with it (“for the lulz”).

NCRI analyst Alex Goldenberg says that while Twitter’s action in response to the hate speech last week was effective, the company could have forecast and prevented it, too.

Hours before the deluge of hate speech, he said, “We assessed that this particular online troll campaign was being driven by coordinated, inauthentic activity that originated specifically on 4Chan. There, we detected a surge in mentions of the n-slur in tandem with mentions of Twitter.”

NCRI uses sophisticated machine learning software and systems to monitor huge amounts of social network content, and to track rising hatred and threats against marginalized groups online, including Black, Jewish, Hindu and Muslim people.

It makes research tools available and publishes reports, safety recommendations and warnings, sometimes delivering them directly to social networks, about where threats are rising, and may be likely to spill over into the physical world. According to Sohn, NCRI’s hope is to use this information to prevent real-world harm those online efforts.

NCRI was previously able to forecast an uptick of violence against Asian Americans as the Covid pandemic emerged, and identify an imminent threat from an anti-government group (the Boogaloo Boys) against law enforcement personnel. They also warned of the rise of communities encouraging self-harm, primarily cutting, on Twitter.

What NCRI found this time

The NCRI found that in the 12 hours after Musk arrived at Twitter headquarters, the use of an anti-Black epithet (the n-word) on the social network increased nearly 500% from the previous average. NCRI published this quick study the next morning as Musk’s deal officially closed.

For the new study, NCRI dug back into the historic data. The firm found that when Musk first disclosed that he had agreed to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share, back in April 2022, a similar raid had occurred.

Comparing the two events, NCRI found that Twitter did a better job stopping the raid this time.

“While nearly half of the accounts recently disseminating the n-slur have been suspended, less than 10% of accounts had been suspended in the previous raid, suggesting this is a historical problem predating the purchase with historically uneven enforcement.”

Despite Twitter’s forceful response to the hate speech, some damage had already been done.

Several advertisers have paused spending on Twitter for now until they can get a better indication of how Musk will deliver on his promise to keep it “warm and welcoming” and prevent it from becoming a “free-for-all hellscape.”

Among those who have quit Twitter for now are Shonda Rhimes, who is the creator of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Bridgerton” and other hit TV shows, Grammy-winning singer and songwriter Sarah Bareilles, and actor and “This Is Us” producer Ken Olin.

Others are waiting to see where Musk and his teams take the product, but have threatened they may leave depending on the results.

Basketball icon LeBron James expressed his concern about the rise in racist tweets, and Musk replied to him on Twitter with a link to a thread from the social network’s current head of safety, Yoel Roth. The long-time Twitter exec said their teams had taken steps to quash accounts that were responsible for a huge portion of the attacks.

NCRI’s analysis confirms that the steps Roth and the safety team took were effective.

In the future, NCRI would like to see greater use of “automated anomaly detection,” technology commonly used in cybersecurity to monitor network performance, or to detect when somebody may be trying to hack into a company’s systems, says NRCI’s lead intelligence analyst Alex Goldenberg.

Anomaly detection applied in social media would have let Twitter take preventative action once the planned raid was initially detected.

Goldenberg and Sohn compare this technology to a smoke detector or carbon-monoxide detector for social problems brewing online.

While Musk has billed himself as a free speech absolutist, his track record defending other’s rights is mixed. More recently, he has acknowledged a need to balance free speech ideals with trust and safety on Twitter.

One thing he has not promised to do publicly is take better care with his own tweets.

Musk has a history of posting unfounded conspiracy theories, comments and jokes that have been widely interpreted as sexist, anti-LGBTQ, racist or antisemitic. Memorably, he has posted Hitler memes to his widely followed Twitter account.

Just after he took over Twitter, Musk shared an unfounded, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about a home invasion and assault on Paul Pelosi, husband of the speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Musk later deleted the tweet without an explanation.

He currently boasts 113.7 million listed followers on the platform, a number that’s rapidly growing.

Technology

Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Published

1 day ago

July 11, 2025

admin

Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Technology

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Published

2 days ago

July 11, 2025

admin

Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Published

2 days ago

July 11, 2025

admin

Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.