After Elon Musk closed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter on Thursday Oct 27th, the platform has seen a near 500% rise in the usage of the N-word.

A report from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a research group that analyzes social media content to predict emerging threats, found that the use of the N-word “has increased nearly 500 percent from the previous average,” according to The Washington Post.

A self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist”, Musk’s takeover seems to have emboldened anonymous accounts set on testing the limits of the social media platform’s moderation policies.

Alex Goldenberg, NCRI’s lead intelligence analyst, told The Washington Post that the online trolls may be intending “to make as big a mess as possible for Twitter’s new management.”

Musk tweeted on Friday that Twitter will form a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints”. He added that major decisions on moderation won’t be made until the council meets.