Barry Eitel
November 17, 2016•Update: November 17, 2016
By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
The chief executive of Twitter publically apologized Thursday after reports that a white supremacist group was able to advertise on the social platform in violation of the company’s own rules.
A group of users late Wednesday reported they saw a sponsored tweet from the neo-Nazi white supremacist organization called the New Order. The tweet promoted an article on the New Order’s website titled “The United States Was Founded as a White People’s Republic”. Considering the content of the article and the group behind it, the ad should have been blocked by Twitter’s advertising policies that prohibit hate speech.
Twitter’s CEO responded and said the tweet had been missed by the company’s algorithms but has since been removed.
“We made a mistake here and we apologize,” Jack Dorsey tweeted. “Our automated system allowed an ad promoting hate. Against our policy.
The account linked to the advertisement has also been removed and suspended.
The embarrassing mistake came a day after Twitter announced it was going to do more to combat hate speech and harassment on the platform.
Earlier this week the company banned several prominent accounts linked to the “alt-right”, an ultra conservative movement that has publicly proclaimed white nationalist and racist ideologies. The loosely defined faction has been connected to President-elect Donald Trump and Steve Bannon – his controversial pick for chief White House Strategist who is executive chairman of the right-leaning Breitbart News website.
According to Twitter’s advertising policy, the company prohibits advertising any content that “targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease”.
Twitter, along with Facebook and Google, has been heavily criticized since Trump’s stunning election last week for helping to spread false news and harassment. All three companies have introduced new policies in an attempt to curb hate speech and misleading content.
