The study validates concerns about Musk's leadership potentially silencing climate conversation and scientific research on the platform.
The study was conducted on 3,80,000 users who tweeted regularly on major climate issues, including global warming and biodiversity.
As per the study, 47.5% of these formerly active users had become inactive since Musk’s takeover. X now only has about 52.5% active users pertaining to the environment.
Some of the contributing factors which led to this decrease include rising hate speech, abuse, API service outages, and throttling access to various posts, among others.
The use of the hashtag #climatescam doubled in tweets in the month following Musk's official takeover, indicating an increase in the prevalence of climate misinformation on the platform.
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