An Open Letter to Jack Dorsey: We’ll Celebrate Twitter Once It Bans Hate

Dear Mr. Dorsey:

We, a coalition of civil-rights and racial-justice advocates, have been tracking the explosion of hate and bigotry on Twitter for several years. Twitter has become a megaphone for white supremacists to amplify and normalize hate-filled ideologies. It has allowed them to organize violent real-world events and publicize their acts of violence.

As Twitter turns 14 years old, it is disappointing that it has yet to establish a policy that keeps its users safe. Now that Twitter is older and wiser, we ask that you honor the requests we have made alongside more than 110,000 petition signers over the past six months, that Twitter immediately ban white supremacists from the site and adopt the Change the Terms coalition’s model corporate policies to curb online hate.

Two years after the deadly Unite-the-Right attacks, racial-justice and anti-hate leaders from Charlottesville called on Twitter to ban white supremacists from its platform. The leaders noted how online hate spills over into offline violence and how Twitter’s failure to remove purveyors of hate, including those that organized the deadly rally, has allowed white supremacists to continue to organize, fundraise, recruit and normalize attacks on diverse communities.

More recently, the El Paso shooter posted a bigoted, anti-immigrant manifesto online that invoked the “invasion” language in President Trump’s tweets about immigrants. And still, the so-called philosopher who inspired the attacks in El Paso and Christchurch remains on Twitter, and so does the YouTuber who helped his ideas go viral.

Mr. Dorsey, you have expressed a desire to encourage “healthy” debate and conversations on the platform. Yet a recent report found that you have “failed to protect the targets of abuse on his platform.” That’s not healthy; it’s toxic. We ask that you no longer ignore the multiple requests from our organizations to issue a blanket ban on white supremacists on Twitter, especially since your peers at Facebook and YouTube have done so.

Simply put, your inaction is endangering the lives of people of color, immigrants, religious minorities, LGBTQIA+ people and women. Due to your apparent apathy on this issue, Twitter is

not a place where diverse communities can safely express themselves without risk of defamation, harassment or worse.

We respectfully request that you answer the following questions:

● The Change the Terms coalition has called on Twitter to adopt a policy to ban white supremacists, which its counterparts at Facebook and YouTube have already done. Indeed, Twitter hosts prominent white supremacists like former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and infamous Charlottesville riot organizer Richard Spencer. Not only has Twitter failed to rid its platform of white supremacists, it continues to validate white supremacists’ viewpoints by allowing dozens of them to have verified accounts with “blue check marks” such as Katie Hopkins and Stefan Molyneaux. Why hasn’t the company taken a blanket stance against all white supremacists as platform giants like Facebook and YouTube have?

● Dozens of civil-rights and racial-justice organizations have criticized Twitter for allowing racism and other forms of bigotry on its site. Will Twitter adopt the Change the Terms coalition’s model corporate policies to disrupt hateful activities? If so, when? If not, why not?

Birthdays should be a time for celebration and introspection — not hate, hostility, and violence — they are about growing and committing to doing better in the year ahead. We urge you to protect your users by banning white supremacists and adopting the Change the Terms model policies. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Change the Terms

Bend the Arc Jewish Action

Center for American Progress

Color Of Change

Council on American Islamic Relations

Define American

Free Press

Greenlining Institute

Line Break Media

National Hispanic Media Coalition

National Immigration Justice Center

MediaJustice

RYSE Center

Sleeping Giants

Southern Poverty Law Center

Ultraviolet

United Church of Christ, OC Inc.

18 Million Rising