An Israeli-born Jewish comedian in Germany daubed anti-Semitic tweets on the street outside Twitter’s headquarters in Hamburg to draw attention to the social media giant’s inaction in tackling online hate.
Slurs including “Jewish Pig”, “Let’s gas some Jews together” and “Gays to Auschwitz” were chosen to be spray-painted by Shahak Shapira.
Shapira has produced a YouTube video (see above) to highlight his protest called ‘#HEYTWITTER’, in which he claims that he has reported almost 300 obnoxious tweets and more than 150 hate comments to Facebook so far this year. Shapira says around 80 percent were removed, but has only have received nine answers for Twitter.
“The statements I reported weren’t just plain insults or jokes, but absolutely serious threats of violence, homophobia, xenephobia, or Holocaust denial,” he says in the video. “Things no one should say and no one should read. If Twitter forces me to see those things, then they’ll have to see them too.”
A spokesman for Twitter told Reuters the company would not comment on the specifics of individual accounts for reasons of privacy, but said it strictly enforced its rules and had stepped up the policing of abuse on its network.
Twitter is now taking action on 10 times as many abusive accounts compared with the same time last year, he added.
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