  On October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter, becoming its new CEO and
firing many top executives in the process. Musk listed fewer restrictions on
content moderation and removal of spam bots among his goals for the platform.
Given findings of prior research on moderation and hate speech in online
communities, the promise of less strict content moderation poses the concern
that hate will rise on Twitter. We examine the levels of hate speech and
prevalence of bots before and after Musk's acquisition of the platform. We find
that hate speech rose dramatically upon Musk purchasing Twitter and the
prevalence of most types of bots increased, while the prevalence of astroturf
bots decreased.
