BORIS Johnson today slammed Wiley’s “abhorrent” anti-Semitic Twitter rant as thousands boycotted the social media site in protest at its failure to act on hate.
The PM’s spokesperson said today that the platform must do better to remove harmful content, quicker.
It comes after the rapper had his account suspended and some tweets were deleted after posting a string of hateful messages online last week.
Police are investigating a series of comments made on the musician’s Instagram and Twitter accounts on Friday that led to him being banned from both for seven days.
Wiley’s tweets were still visible 12 hours after they were posted – triggering accusations that Twitter was “ignoring anti-Semitism”.
Thousands took the decision to boycott the social media site for failing to act quickly enough today – led by Lord Sugar, Gary Lineker and Rachel Riley.
The PM’s spokesman said today: “Social media companies need to go much further and faster in removing hateful content such as this.”
“The message is clear: Twitter needs to do better on this.”
Among the under-fire tweets, Wiley wrote: “If you work for a company owned by 2 Jewish men and you challenge the Jewish community in anyway of course you will get fired.”
He also said: “Red necks are the KKK and Jewish people are the Law…Work that out.”
Another tweet stated: “In fact there are 2 sets of people who nobody has really wanted to challenge Jewish & KKK but being in business for 20 years you start to understand why.”
Chief Rabbi accused Twitter and Facebook of being “complicit” in anti-Semitic hatred in a blistering letter to the social media giants earlier today.
In a furious letter to Twitter and Facebook, who owns Instagram, the chief Rabbi wrote: “This cannot be allowed to stand. Your inaction amounts to complicity.”
Using the hashtag #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate, a number of high-profile Twitter users have announced their support for a planned boycott of the site in protest over the company’s handling of the incident.
Among those confirming they would take part was shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy, who tweeted her support alongside the message “#Solidarity”, as did fellow Labour MP Stella Creasy and Conservative MP Brendan Clarke-Smith, who said: “Anti-Semitism has no place in society and there should be zero tolerance of it.”
The official Labour Party account tweeted that it supports those taking part but as the official opposition with the duty of holding the Government to account it “cannot afford to be absent from social media platforms”.
The PM is not joining a boycott of Twitter in response to the furore because of the need to communicate “important public health messages”.
His spokesman said: “But at the same time we have set out very clearly that Twitter’s performance has not been good enough in response to the anti-Semitic comments made by Wiley and it needs to do much better.”
New regulation to better hold online companies to account is currently being prepared by the Government.
Twitter has previously said “abuse and harassment” have “no place” on its service and that it takes enforcement action over accounts which violate its rules addressing hateful conduct.
Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.hellofaread.com/politics/brits-told-not-to-travel-to-majorca-ibiza-and-the-canary-islands-in-sweeping-u-turn/
