International day against hate speech: 47 organizations close their X accounts
Terre des hommes, Germanwatch and 45 other organizations shut down their X accounts in protest against hate and hate speech.
(Image: byebyeelon.de)
47 organizations from the fields of the environment, health, agriculture, human rights and social affairs are protesting against hate speech on the short message service X. For one week, they want to inform their 180,000 followers about the topic of hate speech in an "eXit week" with the hashtag #ByeByeElon. After that, they want to discontinue their activities on Twitter, which has been renamed by the new owner Elon Musk. In doing so, Terre des hommes, Germanwatch, Kindernothilfe and others want to "set an example for a democratic and respectful culture of debate" on the occasion of today's International Day for Combating Hate Speech proclaimed by the UN, according to a joint statement.
The organizations do not want to delete their accounts, but rather shut them down. Otherwise, there is a risk that their profiles could be hijacked. Some of the organizations have already shut down their X accounts in recent months or deliberately reduced their activity there. They would only become active on X again if the moderation practices and debate culture there were to return to democratic rules, as they put it.
Extremists unblocked again
Since Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, there has been an increase in violent, discriminatory and disinformational content on the service. Musk equates moderation with censorship and has therefore significantly reduced it; accounts that had already been blocked due to the dissemination of extremist content have been reactivated, the organizations write. Hate, incitement, calls for violence and disinformation are now part of everyday interaction on X, extremism and anti-democracy dominate the debates there, and the operator ignores the brutalization.
Empfohlener redaktioneller Inhalt
Mit Ihrer Zustimmmung wird hier eine externe Umfrage (Opinary GmbH) geladen.
Ich bin damit einverstanden, dass mir externe Inhalte angezeigt werden. Damit können personenbezogene Daten an Drittplattformen (Opinary GmbH) übermittelt werden. Mehr dazu in unserer Datenschutzerklärung.
The ByeByeElon initiative refers to a survey conducted in February of this year, in which respondents stated that they had already noticed hate online. Around one in eight had already been affected by it themselves. Hate speech in tweets often precedes or follows real-life attacks, a study found at the beginning of 2023.
The International Day for Combating Hate Speech is based on the United Nations' Action Plan to Combat Hate Speech (PDF), which it presented in June 2019. The day was first held two years ago. "Hate speech is a hallmark of discrimination, abuse, violence, conflict and, in some circumstances, crimes against humanity. This has been demonstrated time and again in history, including in Nazi Germany, Rwanda and Bosnia," explained UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently.
(anw)
