After Paul Pelosi attack, a torrent of violent messages flood Elon Musk-owned Twitter

© Blair Heagerty/SFGATE

Twitter headquarters on Monday, Jan. 11, 2021.

When news broke that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was recovering from a violent hammer attack early Friday morning, it spread, as news so often does, on Twitter — which is newly owned by Elon Musk. Posts with updates about the break-in at the speaker’s house and about her 82-year-old husband’s condition were met in the replies with celebration.

Musk has yet to implement any definitive policies on Twitter, though he did tweet his plans for a “content moderation council” Friday morning, tempering any hopes of a free-for-all. Still, the changing of hands and the ousting of Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and other high-level executives has trolls on the platform cheering on Musk’s commitment to “free speech,” and in the case of the Pelosi attack, has almost certainly emboldened some users to post hateful, violent messages at a higher rate than usual.

The House Speaker has yet to comment on Twitter about the attack on her husband. But for every other well-wisher on her last tweet, which concerned an appearance at a summit in Ukraine, a chorus of “you get what you deserve” replies, hammer jokes and comments about policing and gun control flooded the comments. Twitter’s “More Replies” function usually conceals replies with curse words, slurs and violent sentiments, but none of these missives were hidden from Pelosi’s page under “More Replies.”

“So glad your husband got his head bashed in,” one user wrote. “Too bad it wasn’t you.” Another added, “Too bad you weren’t home yesterday!” 

On Thursday, Musk’s purchase of Twitter officially went through, after months of painfully obnoxious public negotiating and mere days after he tweeted a bad sink pun and changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit.” Musk’s throngs of fans hope that Twitter will become more of a Wild West in terms of content moderation, given the Tesla CEO’s stated desire for “a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated.” He’s previously criticized the policies of the outgoing executive slate — which he fired almost immediately after the takeover was announced — including banning President Donald Trump and cracking down on abuse and hateful tweets. 

Already, disgraced rapper and fashion designer Ye, better known as Kanye West, has been allowed to return to Twitter a week after he tweeted violent antisemitic remarks. (Musk alleged that Ye was let back on Twitter before his takeover.) Musk also proclaimed that he would look into a well-known pro-Trump troll’s purported “shadowbanning.”