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“Inverse” Migration: Why Are So Many US Citizens Moving To Mexico?

"Inverse" Migration: Why Are So Many US Citizens Moving To Mexico?

Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

As life gets prohibitively…

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"Inverse" Migration: Why Are So Many US Citizens Moving To Mexico?

Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

As life gets prohibitively expensive for many people living in the US (and other rich countries), relatively cheaper countries like Mexico are becoming increasingly attractiveBut for local people the costs are growing.

Between January and September of 2022, Mexico issued 8,412 Temporary Resident Cards (TRT) to US residents, 85% more than in the first three quarters of 2019, according to a Mexican government migration report. Many are choosing to live in Mexico City. Such rapid growth rates have not been seen since comparable data became available in 2010. The number of Americans receiving permanent residency during that period has also risen sharply (48%), to 5,418.

But this may be just a fraction of the real number of American expats choosing to settle in Mexico. As the Mexican government has said for years, the number of Americans moving to its shores is likely far greater than the official figures suggest. According to data from the Ministry of Tourism (Sectur), over 10 million US citizens arrived as visitors through September this year, 24% more than in the same period of 2019. However, the Mexican authorities do not know exactly how many of those chose to stay.

A Growing Trend

In 2020, the US State Department estimated that 1.5 million USians were living in Mexico, more than double the number a decade earlier. That was before Usians began moving to Mexico at an even faster pace.

But why are so many choosing to move across the Southern border in the first place?

One reason is that it is remarkably easy. Mexico is at most a four- or five-hour flight away from most US cities. It has also been one of the most welcoming countries since the COVID-19 pandemic began, having implemented fewer COVID-19 travel restrictions than just about any other country on the American continent. Nor has it introduced vaccine passports. This has made it particularly attractive to digital nomads looking for affordable destinations with few COVID-19 restrictions.

Mexico is also remarkably cheap, as long as you are earning dollars, euros or some other hardish currency.

“Obviously, if you can earn in dollars and spend in pesos, you can triple your income,” Marko Ayling, a content creator and writer living in Mexico City told El País. “And that is very attractive to a lot of people who have the luxury of being able to work remotely.”

Unlike Mexicans in the United States, Americans can work in Mexico for up to six consecutive months on their tourist visas as long as they are paid from overseas. And, although technically not allowed, many choose to return to the US for a short period, then return to Mexico and renew their six-month period in the country, and that way continue working.

But it is not just Americans that are opting to live in Mexico. In fact, Mexico is apparently now the preferred destination for those moving abroad, beating off the likes of Indonesia, Vietnam, and even the popular expat hub Thailand. That’s according to this year’s edition of Expat Insider, an annual report published by InterNations, an expat community founded in 2007 that has been gathering data on expat/rich migrant flows and experiences for more than a decade.

Among the biggest draws highlighted by the survey are ‘the ease of settling in’ and ‘finances’. Of vital import to many people choosing to move abroad are how acccessible visas are to live and work in the countries, safety, and how expensive daily life is. Mexico may have not topped the ranking in all aspects, but it still came out on top with a higher average score.

The country also placed third on International Living‘s list of the best places to retire, just behind Panama (#1) and Costa Rica (#2). The accompanying report highlighted one of the key attractions for many retiring Americans: affordable heathcare:

A big part of the lower cost of living in Mexico is the healthcare. There are two government-run programs, including one (INSABI) that is basically free to Mexican citizens and foreigners with residence (there can sometimes be some small out-of-pocket expenses). This system is designed for those without the means to pay for any other healthcare and has facilities all around the country. Another government option is called IMSS, which costs about $500 per year per person. However, with IMSS pre-existing conditions are not covered.

There is also private healthcare, with clinics and hospitals with all the modern equipment and technology, and doctors of every specialty trained in the latest techniques and procedures. In fact, Mexico is a major medical and dental tourism destination for that reason. You can pay cash at a private facility (costs are a fraction of the U.S.—try $50 to $70 for a specialist visit, $300 for an MRI) or use local or international insurance.

Of course, Mexico has been a popular retirement destination for USians for decades, with places like San Miguel de Allende, Puerto Vallarta, Oaxaca, Cabo San Lucas and Chapala/Ajijic particularly in demand. But as life grows more expensive and more precarious for working- and middle-class USians, this trend is likely to intensify.

As a Brit living in Barcelona and married to a Mexican woman, I can understand the lure that draws people to Mexico. It is a beautiful, vibrant, exotic country with a bewitching color scheme, a rich culture and a diverse geography. The food is delectable and the people by and large warm, welcoming and supportive (in Spanish we would use the word “solidario,” meaning they have solidarity with others). The weather in the Valley of Mexico is temperate all year round. The biggest concern I personally would have about living in Mexico, which is something my wife and I are seriously considering, is its escalating water crisis.

The decision to switch one’s country of residence is usually a deeply personal one and is often triggered by both pull and push factors. Not only are you moving to somewhere new but you are also moving away from somewhere established and familiar, where many of your friends and family live. Speaking as someone who has spent the best part of his adult life living abroad, it is a huge step. I would be very interested to know from US readers who, live Yves, are thinking of leaving the US what their main motives are for doing so.

Security Concerns

Ironically, this gathering exodus to Mexico is happening at the same time that the US Federal Government is issuing blanket travel warnings for many Mexican states. In August the State Department issued alerts for 30 of Mexico’s 32 states, six of which (Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Zacatecas) it warned US travelers against visiting altogether, due to the high risk of being kidnapped or attacked.

There is no doubt that security remains the primordial issue in Mexico, as it does in many other Latin American countries. Although the number of people dying in the war on and for drugs has ebbed slightly in the past two years, the country still boasts some of the highest homicide rates on the planet, with Zamora de Hidalgo at 196 per 100,000 people, Zacatecas at 107, and Tijuana at 103. Also, regions that were traditionally relatively safe, such as Puebla or Quintana Roo, have recently been caught up in the spiral of violence.

But for the most part, the danger zones are in small pockets of states close to the US border, where most of the drugs are trafficked, or parts of the Sierra Madre Occidental, where many of the drugs are grown. They are not, as the US travel alerts suggest, uniformly sweeping across states.

Another common misconception is that Mexico City, being one of the largest conurbations in the world, must also be one of the most dangerous places in Mexico. Yet in reality, Mexico City has largely escaped the worst of the cartel violence, for a slew of reasons outlined in a recent article by British expat journalist Ion Grillo. They include the fact that while the drug gangs have a presence in the capital, they do not control it:

[W]hile the mobsters are certainly here, they do not operate as they do in their strongholds. Mexico City is not a strategic turf to produce drugs (like in the Sierra Madre), or to traffic drugs to the United States (like on the border).

In Culiacán, gangsters exert an immense control of their territory, with lookouts on every corner and gunmen lurking in safehouses. In the capital, however, Sinaloa operators can disappear into the urban sprawl. It’s more a place to make deals, meet with contacts in the federal government, and launder money.

There’s also talk of a pax-mafiosi in the capital, an agreement between the big narcos not to fight here. I haven’t heard this straight from the mouth of crime figures, but this is possible, even perhaps as an informal understanding that they do business and not go to war like back in Tijuana.

Another factor is that Mexico is a heavily centralized country and all the federal agencies are here, along with the bulk of the governing class of politicians and heads of big business. These powers-that-be don’t want a mess on their own doorstep. The federal forces won’t allow a convoy of a hundred hitmen to blaze up Insurgentes avenue like they get away with doing in Zacatecas.

The extensive use of cameras and the mobilization of one of the largest unified city police forces in Latin America have also helped to keep a check on the violence. As Grillo documents, not only is Mexico City one of the less dangerous cities in Mexico; it is getting safer and is already less dangerous than some US cities:

The Mexico City [murder rates] don’t refer to the whole urban sprawl of 22 million but to the official capital district, now called CDMX, which has about 9.2 million people. The Mexican government keeps a database of the murder numbers from police and prosecutor records, and there is another database from morgues and death certificates.

The police count recorded a peak of 1597 murder victims here in 2018, dropping to 1006 last year. That gives Mexico City a murder per capita rate of about 10.9 per 100,000 in 2021. This year the number has dropped further still.

Comparing the 2021 figures, Mexico City still has a higher murder rate than New York (which had about 5.7 homicides per 100,000), but it is lower than Portland (12.9), Dallas (14.6) or Minneapolis (22.1).

The most murderous U.S. cities include Baltimore (57.5) and St Louis (65.3), which have extremely high levels considering the wealth and power of the United States.

Both Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador (aka AMLO) and Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who is hotly tipped to succeed AMLO in 2024, have seized on this success to try to attract yet more visitors and expats to the city.

“How much we have advanced on the issue of security,” said AMLO in a recent daily press conference. “Because of this, thousands of foreigners have arrived to live in Mexico City…They are welcome.”

The Downsides

But not everybody is so thrilled. As many national and international newspapers have reported in recent months, the continuous arrival of digital nomads from the US, the EU and other rich economies is making life more expensive in Mexico City neighborhoods such as La Condesa and La Roma, as well as in Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, San Miguel de Allende and Oaxaca.

In the verdant and unusually walkable barrio of La Condesa, a popular spot among well-heeled foreigners, apartment rents surged by 32% between January and June alone, according to a report from real estate marketplace Propiedades.com.

As many locals complain, living in Mexico may seem incredibly cheap to the new arrivals but only because they’re getting paid in dollars, euros or some other relatively hard currency. For those paying in pesos life is getting more and more expensive as the digital nomads drive local rents and prices vertiginously higher. For local landlords and real estate investors, the pickings are rich.

“What is happening is the people who can no longer to afford to live in the cities of their own countries end up moving to where they can afford to live,” Sandra Valenzuela, a Mexico City-based activist and artist, told El País. “In the end, it is a problem that is moving as the people move.”

For the moment, Mexico’s government is keeping the welcome mat out. In late October, Mexico City’s government unveiled an alliance with Airbnb Inc. and the country’s UNESCO office to promote the capital as a choice destination for remote workers. Mayor Sheinbaum said the city council wants to promote it even more and that the economic benefits of the influx would reach communities beyond the traditional tourist hubs.

It is a story that has already unfolded in many other places, including my home city of Barcelona. As happened here, tenants rights groups are up in arms, denouncing the alliance with Airbnb as part of an “aggressive touristification” of Mexico City and calling for tough regulation of the home rental company.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/22/2022 - 21:00

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Asia’s trade at a turning point

Policymakers in Asia are rightly focused on the potential reconfiguration of global supply chains, given the implications these shifts may have for the…

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By Sebastian Eckardt, Jun Ge, Hassan Zaman

Policymakers in Asia are rightly focused on the potential reconfiguration of global supply chains, given the implications these shifts may have for the development of their export-oriented and highly open economies. While the focus on potential shifts on the supply side of the global and regional trading system is well-justified, equally dramatic shifts on the demand side deserve as much attention. This blog provides evidence of the growing role of final demand originating from within emerging Asia and draws policy implications for the further evolution of trade integration in the region.

Trade has been a major driver of development in East Asia with Korea and Japan reaching high-income status through export-driven development strategies. Emerging economies in East Asia, today account for 17 percent of global trade in goods and services. With an average trade-to-GDP ratio of 105 percent, these emerging economies in East Asia trade a higher share of the goods and services they produce across borders than emerging economies in Latin America (73.2 percent), South Asia (61.4 percent), and Africa (73.0 percent). Only EU member states (138.0 percent), which are known to be the most deeply integrated regional trade bloc in the world, trade more. Alongside emerging East Asia’s rise in global trade, intra-regional trade—trade among economies in emerging East Asia—has expanded dramatically over the past two decades. In fact, the rise of intra-regional trade accounted for a bit more than half of total export growth in emerging East Asia in the last decade, while exports to the EU, Japan, and the United States accounted for about 30 percent, a pattern that was briefly disrupted by the COVID-19 crisis. In 2021, intra-regional trade made up about 40 percent of the region’s total trade, the highest share since 1990.

Drivers of intra-regional trade in East Asia are shifting 

Initially, much of East Asia’s intra-regional trade integration was driven by rapidly growing intra-industry trade, which in turn reflected the spread of cross-border global value chains with greater vertical specialization and geographical dispersion of production processes across the region. This led to a sharp rise in trade in intermediate goods among economies among emerging economies in Asia, while the EU, Japan, and the United States remained the main export markets for final goods. Think semiconductors and other computer parts being traded from high-wage economies, like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, China for final assembly to lower-wage economies, initially Malaysia and China and more recently Vietnam, with final products like TV sets, computers, and cell phones being shipped to consumers in the U.S., Europe, and Japan.

The sources of global demand have been shifting. Intra-regional trade no longer primarily reflects shifts in production patterns but is increasingly underpinned by changes in the sources of demand for exports of final goods. With rapid income and population growth, domestic demand growth in emerging East Asia has been strong in recent years, expanding by an average of 6.4 percent, annually over the past ten years, exceeding both the average GDP and trade growth during that period. China is now not only the largest trading partner of most countries in the region but also the largest source of final demand for the region, recently surpassing the U.S. and the EU. Export value-added absorbed by final demand in China climbed up from 1.6 percent of the region’s GDP in 2000 to 5.4 of GDP in 2021. At the same time, final demand from the other emerging economies in East Asia has also been on the rise, expanding from around 3 percent of GDP in 2000 to above 3.5 percent of GDP in 2021. While only about 12 cents of every $1 of export value generated by emerging economies in Asia in 2000 ultimately met consumer or investment demand within the region, today more than 30 cents meet final demand originating within emerging East Asia.

Figure 1. Destined for Asia

Source: OECD Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) Tables, staff estimates. Note: East Asia: EM (excl. China) refers to Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

These shifting trade patterns reflect dramatic shifts in the geography and makeup of the global consumer market. Emerging East Asia’s middle class has been rising fast from 834.2 million people in 2016 to roughly 1.1 billion in 2022. Today more than half of the population—54.5 percent to be precise—has joined the ranks of the global consumer class, with daily consumer spending of $12 per day or more. According to this definition, East Asia accounted for 29.0 percent of the global consumer-class population by 2022, and by 2030 one in three members of the world’s middle class is expected to be East Asian. Meanwhile, the share of the U.S. and the EU in the global consumer class is expected to decline from 19.2 percent to 15.8 percent. If we look at consumer-class spending, emerging East Asia is expected to become home to the largest consumer market sometime in this decade, according to projections, made by Homi Kharas of the Brookings Institution and others, shown in the figure below.

Figure 2. Reshaping the geography of the global consumer market

Figure 2

Source: World Bank staff estimates using World Data Pro!, based on various household surveys. Note: Middle-class is defined as spending more than $12 (PPP adjusted) per day. Emerging East Asia countries included in the calculation refer to Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and China.

Intraregional economic integration could act as a buffer against global uncertainties  

Emerging economies in Asia are known to be the factories of the world. They play an equally important role as rapidly expanding consumer markets which are already starting to shape the next wave of intra-regional and global trade flows. Policymakers in the region should heed this trend. Domestically, policies to support jobs and household income could help bolster the role of private consumption in the steady state in some countries, mainly China, and during shocks in all countries. Externally, policies to lower barriers to regional trade could foster deeper regional integration. While average tariffs have declined and are low for most goods, various non-tariff barriers remain significant and cross-border trade in services, including in digital services remains particularly cumbersome. Multilateral trade agreements, such as ASEAN, the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) offer opportunities to address these remaining constraints. Stronger intraregional trade and economic integration can help diversify not just supply chains but also sources of demand, acting as a buffer against uncertainties in global trade and growth.

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Air pollution can increase the risk of COVID infection and severe disease – a roundup of what we know

Air pollution can increase COVID risk by weakening our immune defences and exacerbating underlying health conditions.

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Tatiana Grozetskaya/Shutterstock

The early part of the COVID pandemic led to a significant reduction in air pollution in many parts of the world. With lockdowns, travel restrictions and decreased economic activity, there was a noticeable drop in the emission of air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and particulate matter (PM) that is fine enough to be inhaled.

Changes in air pollution varied depending on the location and the type of pollutant, but reductions were particularly noticeable in cities and industrial areas, where emissions from transport and industrial activities are typically high. In many areas though, air pollution levels quickly increased again as restrictions eased and activity resumed.

Along with having harmful effects on the environment, it’s well established that air pollution can have negative effects on human health, including increasing the risk of respiratory and heart problems and cancers. Emerging research suggests air pollution may also affect the brain and be linked to certain developmental issues in babies. The severity of these health effects can depend on the type and concentration of pollutants, as well as individual factors that affect a person’s susceptibility.

While there has been much focus on the way the pandemic affected air quality, it has also become apparent that air quality affects COVID risk – both in terms of the likelihood of contracting COVID and how sick people get with the infection.

How does air quality increase COVID risk?

Research has shown that long-term exposure to air pollution, particularly fine particulate matter under 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5) and NO₂, may increase the risk of COVID infection, hospitalisation, and death.

A study in England, for example, showed long-term exposure to PM2.5 and NO₂ is associated with 12% and 5% increases in COVID cases, respectively, for every additional microgram of PM2.5 or NO₂ per cubic metre of air.

One of the primary ways that air pollution may increase the risk of COVID is by weakening the respiratory system’s defences against viral infections. We know long-term exposure to fine particulate matter that is inhaled can reduce the lungs’ immune responses and cause damage to them, which can make people more vulnerable to respiratory infections like COVID.


Read more: Long COVID linked to air pollution exposure in young adults – new study


Air pollution can also impact the immune system’s ability to fight off viral infections. Exposure to particulate matter, such as PM2.5, has been linked to increased levels of cytokines and inflammation in the body.

Cytokines are signalling molecules that help the immune system fight infections. But high levels can cause a “cytokine storm”, where the immune system overreacts and attacks healthy cells in addition to the virus. Cytokine storms have been associated with severe COVID and a higher likelihood of dying from the disease.

And notably, COVID binds to ACE2 receptors to enter a cell. In studies of animals, PM2.5 exposure has been linked to a significant increase in ACE2 receptors. PM2.5 may therefore increase the probability of COVID entering cells in humans.

A crowd of people walking a New York street wearing masks.
There are a variety of factors which could explain why air pollution increases COVID risk. blvdone/Shutterstock

Further, air pollution may increase the severity of COVID symptoms by exacerbating underlying health conditions. Exposure to air pollution has been linked to increased rates of conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, which have been identified as risk factors for severe COVID.

Air pollution may also increase COVID transmission rates by acting as a carrier for the virus. Researchers continue to debate the potential of respiratory droplets from infected people attaching to particulate matter in the air and travelling long distances, potentially increasing the virus’s spread.

How can I reduce exposure to air pollutants?

With all this in mind, reducing air pollution levels may be an important strategy for mitigating the impact of COVID and protecting public health.

This requires a combination of individual actions and collective efforts to address the sources of pollution. There are several ways you can decrease your and others’ exposure to air pollution, including:

Limit outdoor activity during high-pollution days. Check air quality forecasts and limit outdoor activities on “high” days. Try to go outside at times of the day when pollution levels are lower, such as early morning or late evening.

Think about your mode of transport. Using public transport, walking or riding a bike instead of driving can help to reduce pollution levels. If you do drive, try to carpool or use an electric or hybrid vehicle.


Read more: Wuhan's lockdown cut air pollution by up to 63% – new research


Use indoor air filters. Having air filters in your home can help reduce indoor pollution levels. Hepa filters can remove many pollutants, including fine particulate matter. Further, the use of Hepa air systems can successfully filter COVID virus particles from the air.

Samuel J. White advises on air quality and receives funding from Fédération Equestre Internationale.

Philippe B. Wilson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Antisemitism on Twitter has more than doubled since Elon Musk took over the platform – new research

New research shows that antisemitic posts surged as the ‘free speech absolutist’ took over the social media giant. And it has settled at a higher level…

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What goes on in the Twitter shadows.

In the days after Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, the social media platform saw a “surge in hateful conduct,” which its then safety chief put down to a “focused, short-term trolling campaign.” New research suggests that when it comes to antisemitism, it was anything but.

Rather, antisemitic tweets have more than doubled over the months since Musk took charge, according to research that I and colleagues at tech firm CASM Technology and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank conducted. Between June and Oct. 26, 2022, the day before Twitter’s acquisition by Musk, there was a weekly average of 6,204 tweets deemed “plausibly antisemitic” – that is, where at least one reasonable interpretation of the tweet falls within the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of the term as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.”

But from Oct. 27 until Feb 9, 2023, the average was 12,762 – an increase of 105%. In all, a total of 325,739 tweets from 146,516 accounts were labeled as “plausibly antisemitic” over the course of our study, stretching from June 1, 2022 to Feb. 9, 2023.

Finding antisemitism with AI

To identify plausibly antisemitic tweets, my co-authors and I combined 22 published hate speech-identifying algorithms into a single mechanism and used even more machine learning to see which combinations of decisions led to the correct result. We then passed through all tweets – over a million in total – that contained any one of 119 words, phrases, slurs and epithets related to antisemitism.

No such process is perfect. We estimate our model to make a correct decision about 75% of the time. We also no doubt missed some antisemitic tweets not containing any of those 119 key words, as well as those taken down before early December when we collected the data.

We then used an algorithm to draw out 10 different themes of antisemitism seen in the tweets. Some centered around the use of specific antisemitic derogatory epithets. Others alluded to conspiracy theories concerning hidden Jewish influence and control.

Antisemitic tweets directed at Jewish investor and philanthropist George Soros warranted its own category. He was mentioned more than any other person in our data, over 19,000 times, with tweets claiming he was a member of a hidden globalist, Jewish or “Nazi” world order.

Another theme were tweets defending the rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, who had made a number of antisemitic remarks after he had his account briefly reinstated by Musk.

Our research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, also found around 4,000 of the antisemitic tweets were focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These variously claimed that the conflict was caused by Jews, or that Jews secretly caused the U.S. to support Ukraine. They also contained direct antisemitism directed against the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish.

Musk rolls back content moderation

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter came on the back of what I have observed as a decadelong trend among tech giants to take more responsibility for hate speech, harassment, incitement, disinformation and other harms lurking in the information flowing through their platforms. Over that period, companies such as Facebook and Twitter gradually enacted policies to respond to extremism, hate speech and harassment, or increase “civility,” as Twitter itself described it in 2018, and built out the teams and tools to enforce them.

Musk, a self-professed “free speech absolutist,” pointed the platform in a different direction after taking control. In short order, Twitter’s independent Trust and Safety Council was dissolved, previously banned accounts were reinstated and over half of Twitter’s staff was laid off or simply left – including many of those responsible for enforcing the company’s hate speech policies.

As someone who has tracked hate speech on places like Twitter for around 10 years, I believe the changes to Twitter’s moderation practices are only partly to blame for the jump in antisemitism on the platform.

The media spectacle surrounding Musk’s takeover, along with his very vocal views on free speech, likely also encouraged exactly those people to join or rejoin the platform who had fallen foul of its previous attempts to confront hate. Our research gives some backing to this theory. Some 3,855 accounts we identified as posting at least one plausibly antisemitic tweet joined Twitter in the 10 days after Musk took over. This is, however, only a small proportion of the 146,516 accounts that sent at least one antisemitic tweet over the course of the entire study.

Little effect on curbing hate speech

A surge in hate speech on Twitter was flagged by researchers in the weeks after Musk took over, concerns the billionaire dismissed as “utterly false,” having earlier vowed to “max deboosted & demonetized” hateful tweets.

If Twitter has been de-amplifying antisemitism, our research shows almost no evidence of it. Before Oct. 27, antisemitic tweets received an average of 6.4 “favorites” and 1.2 retweets. Since then, they have averaged 6 “favorites” and 1 retweet. Although such engagement isn’t a perfect measure for visibility, tweets made much less visible to users would generally receive less engagement.

We also attempted to measure takedowns of antisemitic tweets. On Feb. 15, 45 days after we initially collected the data, we tried to re-collect all the tweets we identified as antisemitic. Tweets can be unavailable for lots of reasons, and Twitter’s enforcement is only one of them. Imperfect though this is, it does give us a tentative glimpse of what might be happening in regard to the removal of antisemitic posts. And across those dates, 17,589 antisemitic tweets were taken down – 8.5% of the total.

Rising tide of antisemitism

Our findings come at a time when many fear growing threats to Jewish communities. In 2021, the Anti-Defamation League tracked the highest number of antisemitic incidents – including harassment, vandalism and assaults – in the U.S. since they started tracking numbers in 1979. And this is not just a U.S. phenomenon; in the U.K., the Community Security Trust has recorded a similar spike in anti-Jewish activity, while in Germany, anti-Jewish crimes surged by 29% over the pandemic.

Studying social media has shown me again and again just how powerfully it helps to form the cultures and ideas that underlie its users’ behavior. Ultimately, the proliferation of tweets that hold Jews responsible for all the world’s ills, that circulate dark conspiracies of control and cover-up, or that fire derogatory attacks directed toward Jews, can only support antisemitism online – and in the real world.

Carl Miller is a Partner of CASM Technology and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. They conduct a wide range of public-interest social media research on online harms for a range of philanthropic, foundation and public sector institutions.

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