Name: Trolled by Elon Musk: What it’s like to report on online hate - BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-07-28T16:56:05.000Z
Duration: 10 min 33 s
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I think it would be fair to say I get hundreds of notifications.

And not all of those are abusive, but some of them are.

You don't want her to be worried that something bad's going to happen to you.

You don't want anyone that cares about you to be worried.

I know by doing this interview with you and sharing it, I'll probably get more online abuse, but I'm already getting so much.

And I think that my job is to expose how this works and how people are targeted, because I'm a reporter who can do that.

My job is investigating bad stuff that happens on social media.

But social media is also the place where people can reach out to me and I can investigate their stories.

And that's kind of the complexity of social media in general, I think.

Essentially, it involves investigating disinformation, trolling, other harmful content and revealing how it affects all of us real people in the real world.

The COVID-19 vaccine is not proven safe or effective.

TikTok videos discussing Nicola Bully's case and using her name as a hashtag had accumulated over 270 million views.

And I'm hearing quite a lot from younger people who are worried about parents who have fallen very deep into these COVID online movements.

I think social media is much bigger than just disinformation and hate and all the harmful stuff.

But I do think it's increasingly tied up with everything.

My job is interrogating how mistruths or trolling or abuse online can affect real people and then to investigate and hold to account the social media companies, policy makers, law enforcement, people who have a stake in this.

The recent Panorama investigation I did looked at Twitter, the social media platform, and what's happened since Elon Musk took over at the end of last year.

Some of Twitter's 350 million users have been getting in touch with me about a rise in hate and abuse.

He's the new owner of Twitter, and when he took over, there were lots of sackings, changes and new priorities made.

And I wanted to understand how that was affecting users, the people that use Twitter.

And so I tracked down people who work at Twitter, still work at Twitter, used to work at Twitter, to piece together how that's happened.

We had noticed over the past few years that individuals were tweeting less and less, and that's because, you know, fear of abuse and harassment.

I wanted to look at it because I'd noticed that I'd started receiving more hate on Twitter and also because I had lots of people reaching out to me about how they felt they were experiencing more abuse or seeing more hate on Twitter.

So it felt quite a personal investigation to begin with.

In fact, specifically after Elon Musk took over, the online violence directed at you, picked up by our tools, has more than tripled.

I really wanted to do an interview with Elon Musk, who's bought the company, and I actually did a Twitter voter poll, which is something that he's been using to make decisions about Twitter's future.

And so I did a vote to catch his attention.

Over 40,000 Twitter users voted and 89% of them said they'd like Elon Musk to do an interview with me.

He didn't do that interview with me, or he hasn't yet.

And Twitter didn't get back to me about any of the allegations I made.

My experience so far of doing these investigations is that you send off a letter to the social media companies, you lay out what your investigation reveals, you give them the chance to respond.

I've never had any emails back from Twitter.

Elon Musk didn't respond to any of the points raised in the programme.

However, he tweeted about the programme, saying, And then he replied to people saying trolls are kind of fun.

It wasn't very fun being tweeted by Elon Musk in so much as I was absolutely bombarded with hate, some of the worst hate I've ever had.

And I deal with quite a lot of hate because of the topic I cover, but a real deluge.

When I first saw that Elon Musk had tweeted me, it was quite early over here and I had so many messages and I thought, oh, wow, what's happened?

Rothell LMAO, I'm not ever quite sure how you're meant to say that aloud, which means rolling on the floor, laughing my arse off.

I sort of thought for a moment, oh, hang on a second.

I've asked this man for an interview so many times, it feels like.

And this isn't an investigation that's about stuff that doesn't matter.

Ellie tweeted, this year after the man who raped her was sentenced to five years in jail.

This is an investigation where I've heard from real people, including a rape survivor, including people who've been targeted by hate and by trolling and who feared it was getting worse.

There are issues like child sexual exploitation.

There are issues like state sponsored disinformation.

I kind of couldn't quite believe that that was his response.

Since Elon Musk has tweeted me and the army of trolls that have been in touch, it's proved the point.

And people can kind of dismiss it as, oh, it's just all a bit silly or it's a bit funny.

We sort of joked at the beginning about Elon Musk being in touch.

And it's great that he has been in touch because it sort of brings to everyone's attention this this work that you've done and the responses that might be made by him to it.

But since he's been in touch, what about your own personal experience on Twitter?

I've had, you know, really horrible, misogynistic, hate threats, abuse, death threats, scary stuff, stuff I don't like.

There are people who've said that they want me to die in the most horrible way possible, that my time is about to come, that, you know, that kind of sinister we're going to come and get you feel.

And that's the stuff I really, really don't like.

Do you feel like you're constantly looking over your shoulder?

Yeah, I'm very aware of my safety when I'm out and about, which might seem a bit dramatic to people watching.

But actually, it's that worry that it only takes one person, one person who is sending you hate to turn up and confront you in a way that could be violent or aggressive.

I, this is going to make me upset because.

I just really don't think it should be like that.

And I really don't think that journalists should do their jobs and be targeted with abuse.

And I'm just really by no means, I'm not the only one by a mile.

And I just don't think people should feel unsafe.

I think that being so close to the story actually enriches the investigations and the reporting I do because I'm able to understand better.

30 people, mainly men, regularly send me horrible messages.

I mean, all of these investigations are actually not about me at all.

They're about something so much bigger than me.

If the audience can connect with me, then they are more likely to engage with the investigation and the journalism that I'm doing.

He agrees to talk and is happy for the call to be recorded.

When I get messages calling me a bitch, do you kind of realise the impact that that has?

I don't experience other forms of discrimination on Twitter.

So I think all of those factors combined, we've found again and again, makes you much more likely to receive this kind of hate.

I genuinely want to understand, and I truly believe that that the empathy should underpin all of this kind of journalism.

And I think that is what drives me and allows me to stay objective.