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White Supremacists Protest Twitter Ban With 'Fake Black Person' Accounts
White Supremacists Protest Twitter Ban With 'Fake Black Person' Accounts
Source: Twitter

White Supremacists Protest Twitter Ban With "Fake Black Person" Accounts

White Supremacists Protest Twitter Ban With 'Fake Black Person' Accounts

Following Twitter's updated policy on banning accounts and the permanent suspension of several white supremacist accounts, a group of people are protesting the change by creating "fake black people" accounts.

Twitter's new anti-harassment policy began on November 15. A statement, which explained the improvements being made to Twitter's Hateful Conduct Policy, follows:

"Our hateful conduct policy prohibits specific conduct that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. Today we're giving you a more direct way to report this type of conduct for yourself, or for others, whenever you see it happening. This will improve our ability to process these reports, which helps reduce the burden on the person experiencing the abuse, and helps to strengthen a culture of collective support on Twitter."

This then led to the removal of several profiles associated with white supremacists and white nationalists, generally referred to as the alt-right movement. In retaliation to the changes noted white supremacist Andrew Anglin of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer called for a campaign to counter this, encouraging his readers to create fake Twitter accounts.

"When you have time, create a fake black person account. Just go on black Twitter and see what they look like, copy that model," Anglin wrote. "Start filling it with rap videos and booty-shaking or whatever else these blacks post. Read through their posts to get an idea of how they post. You need to be able to post in a manner which is indistinguishable from normal black tweeters."

Anglin said that he and his followers have managed to make more than 1,000 accounts of "fake Black people." However, it is unknown if the false accounts are being used to perpetuate racist black stereotypes, or as another means of continuing their racist platform.