Trump’s presidency drove racist abuse, according to GLA analysis as Musk set to drop Twitter ban
Donald Trump’s election as President spurred on racist abuse against London Mayor Sadiq Khan, fresh analysis from the Greater London Authority has suggested as Elon Musk said he plans to lift the Twitter ban on the former US leader.
According to the GLA, the number of abusive tweets the Mayor was subjected to rose by 94 per cent in 2017. During Trump’s time in office, Khan was subject to more racist slurs from American accounts than he did in the UK.
But the rise in offensive tweets rose significantly in 2016 as Khan rose to prominence and was elected as Mayor of the capital.
Trump explicitly disparaged Khan, calling him a ”stone cold loser”. Following the tweet, there were at least 13,076 incidents of racial abuse on Twitter.
Speaking to at Stanford University yesterday, Khan said: ”Trump used twitter to reach people’s living rooms in ways that in campaigning, you would not be allowed to do.
“There has been a proliferation of hatred on social media. In the first year I was Mayor and the first year Donald Trump became President… the amount of racial abuse I received on social media increased by 2,000 per cent in his first year as President.
“Once he was banned from Twitter, I received the least racial abuse at any time over that five years.”
Sadiq Khan said tech giants needed to ”act practically” rather than wait for regulation.
Musk, who is set to buy Twitter for $44bn, has called the ban on Trump’s twitter account ”a mistake”.
He said today: “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake.”
He also said he would reverse the ban and would not support suspending accounts in future.