On Saturday evening, Twitter re-instated the account of Richard Spencer, a leading figure of the so-called alt-right movement and the head of the white nationalist think tank, The National Policy Institute.
Spencer's account was suspended mid-November as part of a larger cull of prominent alt-right accounts, including Ricky Vaughn (who was previously banned after a BuzzFeed News story detailing his campaign to disenfranchise voters with false information), former Business Insider CTO Pax Dickenson, and John Rivers. Twitter did not comment on as to the reason for the ban, leading many to believe that the justification was for any number of violations of Twitter's rules for targeted harassment, incitement, and hate speech.
However, according to Twitter, Spencer's ban was due to a technicality: creating multiple accounts with overlapping uses. Twitter's multiple account policy was put in place as a safeguard to help curb dog piling and targeted harassment. An email provided to BuzzFeed News shows that Twitter suspended Spencer for overlapping accounts and would re-instate one of Spencer's accounts if he followed Twitter's protocols.
Hello,
As referenced in our November 18, 2016 communication, creating serial and/or multiple accounts with overlapping use is a violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules).
Please select one account for restoration; the others will remain suspended. This account will need to comply fully with the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules). Please reply to this email with the username of the account you would like reinstated and we will make sure to answer your request in a timely manner.
Thanks,
Twitter
"Our rules explicitly prohibit creating multiple accounts with overlapping uses. When we temporarily suspend multiple accounts for this violation, the account owner can designate one account for reinstatement, " a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. "Twitter Rules also prohibit hateful conduct, harassment, and violent threats. We will take action on accounts that violate these policies."
In a posted tweet a few minutes after his re-instatement, Spencer claimed he'd Twitter lobbied to get the account back. "I worked on getting my personal reinstated first. Next will be Radix, NPI, _AltRight_, and WSP," he said referring to the accounts of his White Nationalist think tank, journal, and publishing platform. Twitter's rules would suggest that Spencer will not be able to re-instate these other accounts without violating Twitter's rules once again. Spencer did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment.
The re-instatement of Spencer's account comes at a difficult policy moment for Twitter, which is grappling with its role in policing its platform in a post-Trump world. Spencer's ban in November angered free speech advocates and even political observers. After the ban, David Frum wrote of the seemingly arbitrary policing of Spencer's account in The Atlantic noting, "In the case of Richard Spencer, however, there is no evidence of harassment or incitement to harass. The same can be said of most (although not all) of the other accounts suspended on November 15. These suspensions seem motivated entirely by viewpoint, not by behavior."
Twitter's enforcement with regard to the behavior of many members of the far right has been particularly opaque and inconsistent since the company decided to permanently suspend noted troll and Breitbart writer, Milo Yiannopoulos this summer. Twitter suggested the decision to suspend stemmed from Yiannopoulos using his account to incite his followers to harass targets and that the ban was the result of actions and not speech (a justification seemingly attributed to Spencer's ban).
Just this week, the company came under pressure to address the actions of Donald Trump, after the President-elect's tweets lashing out against Indiana union leader Chuck Jones prompted Jones to receive threatening phone calls. As BuzzFeed News wrote last week, Trump's tweets raised "questions about whether such behavior might run afoul of Twitter's gauzy rules for conduct and its prohibitions against harassment and incitement." Twitter declined to comment as to whether Trump's tweets were in violation of Twitter's rules. However, public scrutiny and Trump's use of platform might be causing unease. At a Recode event last week, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey was asked what Twitter thought about the President-elect's use of the service. Dorsey's response: "complicated."
Though Spencer's ban has been reversed, Spencer is now tip-toeing Twitter's three strike policy, which carries a permanent suspension. A few hours after his re-instatement, Spencer appears to be back to form:
via BuzzFeed - Tech http://ift.tt/2hm6Cae
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