CEJI is leaving Twitter
20/12/2022
CEJI has decided to freeze its Twitter account in response to the irresponsible actions of Twitter’s leadership. We condemn the purposeful threat against the safety of its users. We do not feel comfortable remaining on a platform that does not recognise the social risks, but moreover reinforces outrageous attitudes such as hate speech, harassment, disinformation, and other forms of abuse.
We don’t feel safe anymore and we don’t want our followers to get exposed when giving feedback to our publications. If Twitter does not commit to implementing policies and practices that promote the safety, expression, and participation of its users, we will shut down our account permanently.
We also call on the European Commission to take action on this issue. In May 2016, the Commission agreed with Twitter to a “Code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online”. Since the current management of the platform is not following the commitments in the Code, we would like to see a clearer and penalising response towards Twitter’s deplorable conduct. Likewise, in November 2022 the Council of the European Union adopted the Digital Service Act with the aim of creating a safer digital space. Since this legislative initiative is directly applicable across the EU, we expect EU leaders to denounce the recent actions made by Twitter.
CEJI is committed to tackling the issue of hate crime, hate speech, and discrimination and will not support those actors that are not willing to monitor, respond and prevent such actions.
