Today Twitter’s new guidelines for user conduct went into effect and accounts are already being deleted. The new rules, first announced last month, are meant to cut down on abusive content and harassment and make Twitter a more welcoming place.
Known white nationalists are currently seeing their accounts deactivated, including entire organizations known to be affiliated with neo-Nazism.
Latest Twitter purge suspensions: League of the South’s Hunter Wallace (@occdissent), and the Traditionalist Workers Party (@tradworker). TWP was the organization co-founded by the neo-Nazi profiled in the NYT’s “Nazi next door” story.
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) December 18, 2017
Non-U.S. accounts are being purged, too, including leaders from the white nationalist Britain First movement.
Twitter purge has also hit Jayda Fransen, the Britain First leader whose anti-Muslim videos Trump retweeted recently (@jaydabf) pic.twitter.com/NbdaKZlGZo
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) December 18, 2017
Of course, far-right Twitter users are freaking out. If you search “#TwitterPurge,” you can find many accounts bemoaning the death of free speech (neglecting the fact that Twitter is a platform run by a company, not a public space) and wondering when they will be next.
We’ll have to see just how many accounts will be purged. My guess is that it will only be a few, but sometimes a small minority can still be quite loud.