New York Times Editor Quits Twitter — With Final Tweet Blasting ‘Fakery’ and Hate
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Jon Weisman, the deputy Washington editor at The New York Times, announced that he would be leaving Twitter on Wednesday due to continued anti-Semitic harassment.
On June 8, Weisman wrote two tweets that said he would be leaving Twitter. He said he would stick to Facebook, “where at least people need to use their real names and can’t hide behind fakery to spread their hate”.
So I will be moving to Facebook where at least people need to use their real names and can’t hide behind fakery to spread their hate.
— (((Jon Weisman))) (@jonathanweisman) June 8, 2016
I will leave @twitter to the racists, the anti-Semites, the Bernie Bros who attacked women reporters yesterday. Maybe Twitter will rethink
— (((Jon Weisman))) (@jonathanweisman) June 8, 2016
Weisman, who had become a target for anti-Semitic hate online before, has nearly 35,000 Twitter followers and worked as an economic policy correspondent for The New York Times before moving up to an editorial position.
He became the target of anti-Semitic online abuse from Trump trolls last month after tweeting an article denouncing Trump and expressing support for journalist Julia Ioffe, another Jewish journalist who filed a police report after receiving death threats from Donald Trump supporters
Image by Twitter
According to Weisman’s Twitter stream, he gathered up the anti-Semitic posts he received and reported them to Twitter. After submitting the posts, he received a generic response saying that the tweets did not violate the company’s policy.
.@twitter response: we see nothing here that violates our rules.
— (((Jon Weisman))) (@jonathanweisman) June 8, 2016
While Twitter later shut down the accounts of some of the trolls, CNNMoney reports, Weisman still plans to stay off the social media site for a while.
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