Twitter has been widely criticized in recent months for failing to protect users from harassment. Sadly, it’s become a dangerous environment, where death threats and offensive statements have become the norm. To combat this, the social media giant finally released a new harassment muting tool last week much to the happiness of its users. But, the company messed up big-time this weekend after a neo-Nazi tweet was promoted on the platform.
A Twitter user posted a screenshot of the promoted tweet last week. Looking away from the innocent looking children, you’ll see the post is from a group called the New Order – a neo-Nazi organization. I won’t link the website, but it leads to a neo-Nazi group. The shell accounts Twitter even is a redesigned swastika. How this slipped through Twitter’s grasps is unclear.
.@twitter I can't believe anything still surprises me, but why the fuck am I seeing nazi ads on this website pic.twitter.com/jtKKnn8XR5
— Ariana Lenarsky (@aardvarsk) November 16, 2016
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey issued an apology for the Tweet, blaming the promotion on the platforms automated system. The error has since been fixed.
We made a mistake here and we apologize. Our automated system allowed an ad promoting hate. Against our policy. We did a retro and fixed! https://t.co/7gvycmzpsm
— jack (@jack) November 17, 2016
There’s not much to say here. Allowing for neo-Nazi tweets to be promoted is messed up. Yes, it was an automated system which allowed the ad to reach users, but it doesn’t excuse the ad going up in the first place. Twitter needs to be better. Neo-Nazi ads have no place getting highlighted to people anywhere.
