Now that he’s back on Twitter, neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin wants someone to explain the rules to him.
Anglin, the founder of an infamous neo-Nazi website, was reinstated on Thursday, one of many previously banned users who benefited from an amnesty granted by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk.
The next day, Musk suspended Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, after he posted an image of a swastika fused with the Star of David.
“That’s good,” Anglin tweeted on Friday. “Whatever the rules are, people will follow them. We just have to know what the rules are.”
Ask Musk. Since the world’s richest man paid $44 billion for Twitter, the platform has struggled to define its rules for misinformation and hate speech, has issued conflicting statements and hasn’t fully addressed what researchers say is a worrying increase in hate speech.
The “twitter boss” may be learning that running a global platform with nearly 240 million daily active users requires more than just good algorithms and often requires imperfect solutions to difficult situations, difficult decisions that ultimately must be made by a human being and that will surely upset someone.
Musk, a self-described free-speech absolutist, has stated that he wants to make Twitter a global digital public square, but also said he would not make major decisions on content or on restoring banned accounts before creating a “council of content moderation” with different points of view.
He soon changed his mind after polling Twitter users, offering restoration to a long list of previously banned users, including former President Donald Trump, Ye, satire site The Babylon Bee, comedian Kathy Griffin, and neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin.
While Musk’s own tweets suggest that he will allow all legal content on the platform, Ye’s suspension shows that this is not entirely the case. The swastika image posted by the rapper falls into the category of “legal but horrible,” which often embarrasses content moderators, according to Eric Goldman, an expert on technology law and a professor at the University of Law School. of Santa Clara.
While rules have been imposed in Europe forcing social media platforms to create policies on misinformation and hate speech, Goldman noted that, at least in the United States, loose regulations allow Musk to run Twitter as he sees fit, despite his inconsistent approach.