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Twitter Permits Hate Speech, Facebook Removes Post Denouncing It

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Politicians outside of the Capitol with rainbow and trans pride flagsTwitter has, once again, permitted hate speech on its platform from a U.S. politician. Meanwhile, Facebook removed a post denouncing hate speech through the raising of a transgender flag outside of a U.S. politician’s own office. While Apple may have come out in favor of the Equality Act, it seems as though Twitter and Facebook have acted against it.

Congresswoman Marie Newman (D-IL) is one of the sponsors of the updated 2021 Equality Act. She has a transgender daughter, and is supportive of LGBTQIA equality. Her “neighbor” across the hall is none other than notorious Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-obviously-GA). Greene has espoused far-right views, including encouraging Trump supporters who lead the insurrection, being a Q Anon believer, claiming Hillary Clinton has ties to Satan worship, supporting avowed anti-Muslim extremist Laura Loomer, harassing school shooting survivors, baseless and anti-Semitic hate speech, including accusing them of firing “Jewish space lasers” to start wildfires, and, of course, anti-LGBTQ hate speech. The latter involved calling Marie Newman’s daughter a “biological male.” Her hate speech is a clear violation of Twitter’s guidelines, not just for misgendering someone and berating trans people, but for targeted harassment of one person, a representative’s daughter.

Still, proving they’ve learned nothing from Trump’s violent coup attempt, Twitter has allowed her posts to remain. Much like Trump’s calls for “when the looting starts the shooting starts” and his retweeting of a video that claimed, “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat,” Twitter has turned a blind eye as an elected official spreads hate speech and encourages violence.

Facebook, took that hate a step further. Rather than ban Greene for her unabashed hate speech against everyone from Muslims and Jewish people to gays and transgender people, they instead removed Marie Newman’s post supporting her trans daughter for “hate speech.”

Our social networks have always had a right-leaning bias, but this takes that off the deep end.

“Hate Speech Welcome!” -Twitter

As of this writing, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s post is still up. It’s a clear violation of Twitter’s rules against misgendering. Besides her transphobic (and simply, factually, untrue) sign that reads, “There are TWO genders, MALE & FEMALE ‘Trust The Science!’ [sic… on all of that],” which she hung across the hall from a congresswoman who has a transgender daughter, she also misgendered that congresswoman’s daughter, calling her a “biological son.” Both of these, from denying the validity of non-binary people to misgendering a child, are hate speech, banned by Twitter. The latter actually also breaks their rules against specific targeting of an individual. Yet Twitter, having learned nothing from Donald Trump’s violent years, left the Tweet up.

“Supporting Trans Kids is Hate Speech” -Facebook

The results of Facebook’s actions are certainly worse than those by Twitter, and yet, somehow, it’s more forgivable. After all, most of Facebook’s moderation is automated, and it’s likely that this was a mistake. Right-wing extremists online have learned that they could mass-report a post on Facebook to get it removed for hate speech, especially if the message was against hate speech. Facebook doesn’t seem to be so quick to remove actual hate speech. This is likely because Facebook works very hard to protect Republican voices, who are the primary (only?) spreaders of hate speech in the United States.

Congresswoman Marie Newman hung a transgender flag outside of her door to show support for the equality act as well as her transgender daughter. It was also a not-too-subtle dig at the bigot across the hallway. Still, hanging a flag in support of a group to denounce the bigotry of a colleague is in no way hate speech. It is not belittling a person because of how they were born.

Facebook has since corrected their error. You can find Congresswoman Newman’s post on her official Facebook page now. It’s not only available to a limited audience either, it’s available to the public.

The Social Dilemma

An angry Twitter bird shouts profanity, covering up what a diverse group of birds is trying to say.

Hate speech silences others’ free speech.

There are two clear problems here. The first exists both on Facebook and Twitter. It’s that these networks, in an effort to keep an increasingly extremist base, forgive rule violations involving hate speech or incitements of violence. Rather than try to put a stop to the hatred and bigotry that flourish on Facebook and Twitter, the two companies have instead decided to profit from it. Hate drives up user interaction. Twitter was full of tweets today about Representative Marjorie Taylor Green’s hate speech. Her hate made the site more active. More activity means more exposure to ads and more data collected on users for specific ad targeting. For social networks, hate is profitable.

The second problem is unique to Facebook, though Twitter could be guilty of it as well. Facebook uses AI to moderate their website. Users can easily trick it into removing a post by mass-reporting it. It also tends to not realize that posts are hate speech. When someone refers to another person’s deadname as a way of attacking them, an AI can’t possibly recognize that as hate speech. A person would know it’s a targeted attack, but AI is oblivious. As such, reports of that hate speech will go nowhere. People can abuse the system, but the system can’t catch abuse.

Facebook and Twitter have become breeding grounds for hate, violence, false information, and bigotry. That’s just the way they like it.

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