For months now, Twitter has been telling users about plans to make the social media platform a “healthier” service, decreasing the amount of hate and abuse. But the vague policies bruited about by its founder Jack Dorsey haven’t been successful, Huffpost reported, as there is still a palpable white nationalist issue.

In an “extremely conservative” estimate, extremism expert J.M. Berger suggested there were at least 100,000 alt-right users on Twitter. One glaring example is massacre at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, where 51 were killed — the gunman was a Twitter user who spewed Islamophobia and posted about terrorist attacks.

“We just didn’t invest enough,” Twitter co-founder Ev Williams told CNN Business last month. “We underestimated the level of bad actors that we would see and the level of impact they would have.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

And there are hundreds of readily accessible figures, such as alt-right trolls and white nationalist podcasters. As viewers of Dorsey’s TedTalk wanted to know: “How hard is it to get rid of Nazis from Twitter?”

The way white supremacists use social media to spread propaganda and hateful messages is the same as those used by ISIS and foreign terrorist organizations, Huffpost reported. White supremacists were responsible for 78% of of the extremist killings in 2018, with Twitter becoming an easy radicalization tool.

And despite the supposed policy changes, there are still practically no repercussions for the white supremacists spreading hate speech.

Alyssa Fisher is a writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount