Issue:

Muslim Advocates Urges Twitter to Remove Britain First and Jayda Fransen Accounts

Washington, DC – Last night, following President Trump’s retweets of virulently anti-Muslim propaganda, Muslim Advocates sent a public letter to Twitter Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey urging the company to remove the accounts of Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First, and of Britain First – the white nationalist architects of the tweets.

As a member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, Muslim Advocates remains committed to combating hateful content and incendiary rhetoric prevalent across the platform. Muslim Advocates’ recent work to pressure Facebook for the bigotry on its platform was covered by the Washington Post, Politico, and the Daily Beast.  

As the letter, written by Muslim Advocates’ special counsel for anti-Muslim bigotry Madihha Ahussain, states “we urge you to remove these accounts from your platform, as they exist for the sole purpose of vilifying an entire religion and inciting bigotry and violence against Muslims. The content on each of these accounts, Ms. Fransen’s and Britain First’s, are clearly in violation of your hateful conduct policies, which state that Twitter does not tolerate “behavior that incites fear about a protected group.” By removing these accounts, and thereby the hateful content they contain, others will no longer be able to view, share, or retweet the content.

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In light of recent revelations that Russian operatives used your platform and others to spew anti-Muslim bigotry, we are more concerned than ever about hateful content online. As has been reiterated time and again during recent congressional hearings, you have a responsibility to ensure that your platform is not used to spread false content and promote bigotry. We hope that you will do more to consistently enforce your hateful conduct policies for all users—even public figures—as well as remove hateful content and shut down accounts explicitly used to incite fear against protected groups.”

Muslim Advocates is a national legal advocacy and educational organization that works on the frontlines of civil rights to guarantee freedom and justice for Americans of all faiths.

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