Spaces Is Now Flooded With Hate Spreading Groups, Twitter Does This!

Twitter's Spaces audio feature is being overrun by a group of white supremacists. (photo: doc. twitter)

JAKARTA - Twitter's Spaces audio feature is being flooded with white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, and other extremist groups who claim to spread hate.

A new report from the Washington Post that there is hate speech and extremism to be found on the Twitter feature is largely unmoderated by Spaces. Some of that content includes COVID-19 disinformation and conspiracy theories, as well as derogatory discussions about Muslims, transgender people, and black Americans.

Spaces is a new built-in audio feature of the social network that allows users to have live conversations with other users, where Twitter users can listen or volunteer to take part in the discussion as well.

Twitter first announced the feature in late 2020. The company then began rolling out Twitter Spaces to more users throughout 2021.

Still in the Washington Post report quoted from Mashable, Monday, December 13, Twitter executives actually knew it would be easy for bad actors to violate Twitter's policies in Spaces, but their concerns over this issue were instead put aside for the sake of the platform's growth.

It is feared that many people could be easily targeted by these extremists. For now, audio moderation relies mostly on users reporting prohibited content or human moderators listening to such content.

"Ensuring people's safety and encouraging healthy conversation, while helping hosts and listeners to take control of their experience, has been a top priority since the beginning of (Spaces) development. We're working our way through this, but it's not something we have at the moment," said a Twitter spokesperson.

This problem is not limited to Space, the social audio pioneer Clubhouse also faced a similar problem when its popularity exploded during the start of the pandemic. Right-wing extremists and terrorist groups are flocking to this new social platform to spread their hateful messages and ideologies.

Now, Twitter records all Spaces chats and saves them temporarily for moderation. If a Twitter user in Spaces is reported, the company can refer to the footage and impose any penalties it deems necessary. Twitter has a lot of work to do to address the problem.