Twitter to Turn 14 Without White Supremacist Ban, Open Letter from Civil Rights Groups Demands CEO Dorsey Take Overdue Action
“We’ll celebrate Twitter once it bans hate.” Open letter says Twitter must ban white supremacists to protect public safety.
Today, Change the Terms — a coalition of more than 55 civil rights and racial justice activists — Sleeping Giants, RYSE Center, the Greenlining Institute and Line Break Media, sent an open letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey ahead of the platform’s 14th birthday, urging him to ban white supremacists on his platform and adopt Change the Terms’ model corporate policies to disrupt hateful activities. Twitter still hosts more than 40 known white supremacists, including organizers of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, as well as the so-called philosopher who inspired the attacks in El Paso and Christchurch and the YouTuber who helped his ideas go viral.
The open letter reads, in part: “Twitter’s failure to remove purveyors of hate, including those that organized the deadly [Charlottesville] rally, has allowed white supremacists to continue to organize, fundraise, recruit and normalize attacks on diverse communities…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.” Read full letter here.
“While it’s important that Twitter has indicated an intention to remove content that undermines public health efforts to contain coronavirus — they have declined to move with that same urgency to stop white nationalists from amplifying vile rhetoric targeted towards the Asian community in this moment of global crisis, as well as harmful disinformation about Black people during this voting season,” said Brandi Collins-Dexter, Senior Campaign Director at Color Of Change. “Twitter acknowledges its platform can be used for harm, but doesn’t remove the people and content who threaten the health and safety of marginalized communities. The impact of that choice is felt offline — hate crime violence hit a 16-year high last year and has no signs of slowing down. Let’s be clear: Anything short of taking full responsibility for reigning in dangerous content on the platform will be an insufficient response by Twitter to the threats facing our communities.”
“Twitter’s turning 14, and it still doesn’t have a policy to keep its users safe from white supremacists on the platform as our recent report found. Here’s a birthday gift idea that would benefit millions of its users: Ban white supremacists from Twitter for good,” said Nilda Muhr, Campaign Manager at Free Press. “Twitter’s leadership has allowed it to become a dangerous megaphone, amplifying hateful speech and disinformation with dire consequences. Facebook and YouTube have already banned these hateful actors, and Twitter must do the same to protect their users.”
“In today’s increasingly digital world, hateful activities online are turning into real-world violence offline. Despite this new reality, Twitter refuses to ban white supremacists from weaponizing the platform to organize hate and lethal violence,” said Steven Renderos, Executive Director of MediaJustice. “To truly become a safe space for communities of color, Twitter must stop giving white supremacists a platform. Our lives depend on it.”
More than 110,000 people have signed the petition for a Twitter ban on white supremacists, which was delivered to Twitter at a Change the Terms coalition protest outside the company’s San Francisco headquarters in November. Charlottesville leaders also called for Twitter to ban white supremacists from its platform on the anniversary of the deadly Unite the Right rally last August. To date, Twitter has not committed to update its policies and issue a blanket ban of all white supremacists from its platform, as peer platforms Facebook and YouTube have already done.
For interviews with open letter signatories on the danger of Twitter’s 14 years without a ban on white supremacists, please contact Melissa McCleery at 484–201–3778 or melissa@balestramedia.com.
