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Twitter Permanently Bans White Supremacist David Duke (cnet.com) 393

Twitter said on Friday it has permanently banned white supremacist David Duke from its platform for violating the platform's rules on hate speech. From a report: Duke's account "has been permanently suspended for Twitter Rules on hateful conduct," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. Twitter's policy, revised in March, prohibits posts that promote violence or threats of violence against people based on their religion, race or ethnic origin. It wasn't immediately clear what specific post or posts by Duke led to the account's ban. The verified account for Duke, the founder and former Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was blank Thursday, replaced with a message that the account had been "permanently suspended."
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Twitter Permanently Bans White Supremacist David Duke

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  • Good. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by leptons ( 891340 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @12:25PM (#60351819)
    Hate deserves no haven.
    • Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @01:17PM (#60352095) Journal
      Who decides what hate is?
      • Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by farble1670 ( 803356 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @02:06PM (#60352427)

        Who decides what hate is?

        Well, in this was Twitter does, because it's their platform and they are a non-public corporation.

  • . . .last heard, he got utterly trounced in an election, years back. . . 2016?

  • Pretty UnAmerican (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rally2xs ( 1093023 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @01:16PM (#60352093)

    The "greatest generation", whose members saved us from Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, and who included my parents as members, had a saying, "I don't agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

    I believe this sentiment as codified in the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution is timeless and immutable.

    So banning ANYONE for ANYTHING they say I consider unAmerican. Asshats can say what they want. Racists can say what they want. Even liberals can say what they want. The rest of us can say what we wish in opposition to those we believe to be wrong. No, nobody has the right to remain always unoffended. If you can't stand someone else's opinion, browse opinions in places where you won't get offended. Don't try to change the venues where the rest of us enjoy exchanging ideas, however unpopular they may be with some folks.

  • Consistency (Score:4, Interesting)

    by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <[ten.tsacmoc] [ta] [yburxyno]> on Friday July 31, 2020 @01:19PM (#60352111)

    I'm not defending David Duke, he's too easy of a target because he actually is what they accuse him of. The problem is that he is the tip of the slippery slope and there is less room between someone like him and the average person to a zealot than is healthy for society. This is why the ACLU used to defend the KKK and Nazi's, even taking their censorship cases to the Supreme Court. They won both of their cases by the way.

    The big tech companies like to talk about the David Duke's of the world as an act of virtue signalling. In reality it is just an example used to justify censoring or deplatforming an entire category of people. In reality most of these people are going to be nothing at all like the David Duke's of the world.

    The other big issue is that these bans are often coordinated where someone will be banned from one platform and then several others all join in at once. That is blatant deplatforming and that cannot be justified for anything except for something extreme like terrorism or calls to violence.

    Unfortunately Twitter doesn't have any consistency and they allow calls for violence or even genocide to stand. They only ban people based on their politics, their gender or their skin tone. Antisemitism and calls for the genocide of Jews are allowed, violence against whites is allowed, violence against men is allowed, racism is allowed. Twitter is completely incapable of having any type of consistency in their rules and standards and people from all over the world notice this.

    • They won both of their cases by the way.

      Of course they did. The right to free speech is codified in the first amendment and cannot be taken away by the governement.

      Now if that KKK member was shouting racist shit in your house and you threw him out, the Supreme Court would have just laughed at them, not that the ACLU would have taken their case since they have brains and know the difference between free speech infringement by the government and a private organisation not willing to put up with shit.

      The big tech companies like to talk about the David Duke's of the world as an act of virtue signalling.

      God when did people stop looking up virtue signal

  • so I guess that means all other racists are officially endorsed by Twitter. I never thought I'd see the day when a major technology company heavily involved in pop culture like Twitter would implicitly endorse racism.
  • ... young man decades ago but grew up and became educated and is racist no longer (as happens when you get educated and mature).

    Is this more about his criticism of the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians perhaps?

  • It wasn't immediately clear what specific post or posts by Duke led to the account's ban.

    I think it'd go a long way toward silencing opposition to this if they cited specific posts and what terms they violated. Not to mention giving precedent to help other users not go over the line.

    Plus, it'd just be interesting.

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