Social network Twitter hosted an ad that promoted a white supremacist group called New Order earlier this week, after writer and musician Ariana Lenarsky noted the advert on her account, which promoted an article called "The United States was founded as a white people's republic," followed by a hashtag #WhiteAmerica. This situation comes just 12 hours after Twitter launched its plan to limit abusive and hateful content, including an updated policy that allows users to report such content regardless if it targets other users.
Jack Dorsey Apologized For This Situation
The delicate detail about this situation was that the social platform apparently said that screenshot that Lenarsky provided to show the racist content on her account could be fake, considering that it looked "either old or photoshopped". However, the content was eventually eliminated, and the group behind the ad was suspended. Also, CEO Jack Dorsey wrote an apology on his account, explaining that Twitter´s automated system allowed the advert to go through, which could be a huge setback for the company.
According to The Washington Post, Lenarsky responded to Dorsey´s apology, calling for people to keep holding Twitter accountable for filtering the promotions. On a tweet, she told that acknowledgment from the social network and its CEO was great, but the situation isn´t over, considering that people must continue to hold feet to the fire of this racist and bigot contents.
Twitter´s Way To Restore Its New Harassment Policies
This situation puts Twitter once again in the spotlight, giving the fact that it is a huge mistake that harms its new harassment policies, with which the company wants to stop abuse on the platform and stop users´ leak that has been suffering since a while. Although it is too soon to make conclusions about Twitter´s new rules, it is fact that it couldn't have started in the worst manner.
Regarding this situation, a spoke person from the social network explained that it have identified where the process broke down, and there´s already some process in making immediate changes to avoid this to happen again. Apparently, Twitter will add more keywords and images recognition parameters to flag this kind of content in the fastest way.
