It’s Time Twitter Addressed its Problem with Racism
--
Yesterday, I was called a “nigger” by a faceless Twitter account and apparently some how, that did not violate Twitter’s rules regarding abusive behaviour. Wild. If. True. Because that guy is still definitely on Twitter, tweeting up a storm.
After taking a day to collect my thoughts, I’m not even sure why I was surprised. We all remember the Leslie Jones Twitter fiasco last summer. The reality is, these racist attacks aren’t new and they aren’t going away, not without action. By Ijeoma Oluo’s own personal account, these coordinated attacks date back years:
I remember the first time I noticed coordinated attacks against me. One day, a few years ago, I started suddenly receiving a large amount of hate-filled tweets from people who appeared to be neo-Nazis. Dozens of tweets from people with swastikas in their profile pictures were comparing me to gorillas, calling me a welfare queen, showing pictures of hanged black men and women, calling me every racial slur out there and some that may have just been invented that day for those very tweets.
What happened to me yesterday isn’t isolated or new, it’s actually becoming more and more commonplace it seems. And I’m wondering, what exactly Twitter plans to do address this sort of hate and more specifically, these coordinated racist attacks levied at black people who use the platform?
Yesterday, in response to a lot of the commentary regarding Munroe Bergdorf’s remarks about white supremacy, I sent a tweet. It read:
In the words of NeNe Leakes:
I’m not writing this to walk back my original remark. If you disagree, I don’t know, go sit down and read something.
The real fun began when a user who goes by @MicroMeatSnacks signal boosted my tweet to his 33.9K followers:
I don’t know MicroMeatSnacks from a hole in a wall and he doesn’t follow me so it’s important to note that he was either conducting the most narrow search in Twitter history or that more likely, someone sent my tweet to him. Also worth mentioning, he screen-grabbed my tweet instead of just quote tweeting the original so it’d take longer to track him down as the source.
The responses began flooding my mentions, immediately. But somewhere in the fury of shitty tweets hitting my inbox, I caught this little gem:
The next phase involved HP adding me to a Twitter list, “Triggered cuck.” Suddenly, mentions from every corner of the globe were flying in. They ranged from the basic “you’re dumb” to the transphobic “I bet her name was Olivia” to the most extreme “shut the fuck up nigger.”
It’s also important to note that this all happened within 10 minutes. Things escalated so quickly that I had to change my privacy settings so I could actually start reporting tweets as fast as I could. Because it’s also important to remember that Twitter doesn’t let you opt out of being added to lists. That’s right! If someone wants to add you to a list titled “people we’re going to tweet vile, racist shit to today,” they’re welcome to and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
Twitter recently changed it’s mobile interface so it took me a few more minutes to navigate and figure out how to block HP in order to remove myself from the list. That’s the secret by the way: Block the person that added you to get yourself off a list. I don’t know why you can’t just opt out of being added to lists in the first place, surely it would be easier?
Keep in mind, the burden of responsibility is on the person who is being attacked to also go through and either mute the conversation, block users or change their account settings to private. In the middle of doing this, a “get Oliver fired from work campaign” kicks into high gear.
Becky, yes, Becky, from Berlin who joined Twitter in August of 2017 wanted to know why I deleted my original tweet (PS: I, didn’t.). It was just another signal boost to a limited number of followers to keep the vitriol flowing my way, albeit with significantly less punch considering her follower count.
She wouldn’t stop though. She continued by tagging my company’s official twitter handle, making false claims to keep the flames going and continuing to attack my employer. Becky was simply obsessed with making sure Airbnb knew “I was racist” and “trash.”
So where does this leave us? Today, my mentions still have a humdrum of people banging on about how racist and terrible I am and how I need to be fired from my job but beyond that, nothing has changed. I reported six of the most offensive tweets I received yesterday and I received six generic emails from Twitter saying those accounts didn’t violate the rules regarding abusive behaviour.
Unacceptable Twitter. It’s no secret that Twitter has a bot problem with a recent study claiming as many as 48 million accounts could be bots but Twitter also has a racist problem too. As long as Twitter enables racists, the alt-right, neo-nazis or whatever you want to call these sad, hateful people on the internet today to leverage their platform and attack anyone who they deem worth of targeting, we’re going to have a problem.
It’s time Twitter did something about it. I dunno, they can start by making sure tweeting “shut the fuck up nigger” at a black person on their platform registers as abusive behaviour for starters.
