Twitter has suspended several accounts associated with the so-called alt-right, spurring suspicions that the social network is cracking down on users with certain mindsets.
Among the accounts Twitter suspended this week are those of author Richard Spencer, his digital magazine Radix Journal and the National Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank he founded in dedication to “the heritage, identity and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.”
Mr. Spencer — a “professional racist in khakis,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center — described the suspensions Wednesday as “corporate Stalinism.”
“I am alive physically, but digitally speaking there have been execution squads across the alt-right,” he said in a video uploaded to YouTube. “There is a great purge going on, and they are purging people based on their views.”
Other Twitter users whose accounts have been suspended include former Business Insider executive Pax Dickinson, internet personality Ricky Vaughn and blogger Paul Town, a self-described “leading thought leader of alt-right” — a far-right movement that rejects mainstream conservatism and has been linked to white supremacists.
Twitter said in a statement that privacy and security reasons preclude it from discussing individual accounts, though it moved on the suspensions after announcing steps to curb hate speech across its micromessaging platform.
On Tuesday, the company said it was implementing features to make it easier for users to report and ignore offensive behavior.
“If someone is engaged in behavior that violates our rules, around abuse and harassment or around hateful conduct, we’re going to take action on them,” Del Harvey, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety, told USA Today. “That’s independent of political affiliation or belief or anything else. Twitter, as you know, is a worldwide platform and there are challenges like this around the world in all sorts of forms. None of it is unique to any one party.”
Mr. Spencer said the suspensions may have been Twitter’s response to the alt-right’s use of its platform to amplify the campaign ideologies of President-elect Donald Trump.
“I think they are triggered by this narrative that social media helped to elect Trump, and they think they have to do something about it,” Mr. Spencer said in the YouTube video. “Well, the fact is that social media did help elect Trump. This is a clear sign that we have power. We’re changing the world. And they’re not going to put up with it anymore.”
“Twitter’s purge of thousands of Republican Twitter accounts today is a long-term attempt at influencing elections,” tweeted Andrew “weev” Auernheimer, a notorious computer hacker and internet troll.
Mr. Auernheimer describes himself in his Twitter bio as a “GOP free speech hacktivist” and contributor to the Daily Stormer, a website affiliated with white supremacy and neo-Nazism. He changed his Twitter account access from public to private after the wave of suspensions began.
The Southern Poverty Law Center asked Twitter to remove more than 100 accounts of white supremacists that it said violated Twitter’s terms of service, specifically Mr. Spencer’s, center spokeswoman Heidi Beirich, told USA Today.
Since Tuesday, Twitter users have had the ability to instantly report any message as abusive or harmful if “it directs hate against a race, religion, gender or orientation” and “includes targeted harassment.”
“This launch is not going to solve the problem of abuse on Twitter,” Ms. Harvey told The Wall Street Journal in reference to the new feature. “This is just another step along the path.”
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