Twitter suspends white supremacist accounts
- By AFP -
- Nov 17, 2016
SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter accounts of white supremacy advocates who cheered Donald Trump’s election victory were mute on Wednesday, suspended as the social network battles hateful vitriol spewed by “trolls.”
Terminated Twitter accounts included that of Richard Spencer, a leader in an ‘alt-right’ white nationalist movement in the US, and accounts associated with his magazine and “think tank.”
“I think Twitter, Facebook and others are deeply triggered by this election and that social media helped elect Trump,” Spencer said in a video posted on YouTube.
Spencer compared the account suspensions to Adolf Hitler in 1934 wiping out opposition to his Nazi Party to consolidate power in Germany in what is referred to in history as the Night of the Long Knives.
“Basically, my entire digital presence on Twitter has been suspended,” he said in the video.
“It is corporate Stalinism; there is a great purge going on.”
In response to an AFP inquiry, Twitter referred to its rules prohibiting “violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct,” and its promise to take action on accounts violating those policies.