A self-described libertarian whose “Proud Boys” group was active at last year’s Unite the Right rally has seen his Twitter profile and several affiliated accounts suspended this week.
Buzzfeed News reported the development on Saturday, the day before demonstrators were set to gather in D.C. for the one-year anniversary of the violent event in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Addressing Sunday’s rally prior to his Twitter suspension, Gavin McInnes said he and his group would not be participating.
“It goes without saying #ProudBoys have NOTHING to do with this and won’t go near it,” he wrote, according to the Daily Caller. “We are a multi-racial group that eschews the alt-right.”
Nevertheless, Twitter felt he had violated the platform’s terms of service and several associated accounts were suspended.
“We can confirm that these accounts have been suspended from Twitter and Periscope for violating our policy prohibiting violent extremist groups,” Twitter said in a statement to Buzzfeed. – READ MORE
[divider][/divider]Twitter is planning to accelerate changes to the company’s speech policies after a backlash from its own employees who want the company to ban right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, responding to a critical tweet from a Twitter engineer, said Wednesday he is “not happy” with Twitter’s current policies, which he said need to “evolve.”
Twitter vice president Del Harvey also sent a company-wide email Wednesday pledging to accelerate Twitter’s efforts to crack down on “dehumanizing hate speech,” in the wake of internal “conversations” about Jones.
Harvey noted that Twitter also plans to evaluate whether the company needs to better police “off-platform behavior.”
Dorsey explained Tuesday why Twitter has yet to follow Facebook, Google and Apple’s lead by banning Jones: “he hasn’t violated our rules.”
“If we succumb and simply react to outside pressure, rather than straightforward principles we enforce (and evolve) impartially regardless of political viewpoints, we become a service that’s constructed by our personal views that can swing in any direction,” Dorsey tweeted. “That’s not us.”
Dorsey’s explanation angered some of his employees, who demanded the CEO do more to regulate speech on the platform. – READ MORE
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