A new Twitter rule prohibiting “dehumanizing language” announced Tuesday will result in Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan having to delete a video that compared Jewish people to termites.
“Today we’re announcing an expansion to this policy which will address dehumanizing language towards religious groups,” Twitter said in a statement Tuesday. “This is just the first step. Over time we’ll expand the policy to include more groups and update you along the way.”
It went on to explain that tweets that violate the new policy but predate it “will need to be deleted,” but added that it “will not directly result in any account suspensions because they were Tweeted before the rule was set.”
One of the most controversial tweets that was still permitted on the social media site prior to Tuesday was a video of Farrakhan giving a speech to honor the 23rd anniversary of the Million Man March that he posted last October.
Update: It appears Twitter has actioned @LouisFarrakhan‘s tweet comparing Jewish people to termites. When trying to visit the URL, an error message now reads, “Sorry, you are not authorized to see this status.” The tweet was online just 20 minutes ago. https://t.co/9AQzioS24q pic.twitter.com/g50DrhYkAv
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 9, 2019
In the speech, Farrakhan said, “To the members of the Jewish community that don’t like me, thank you very much for putting my name all over the planet … I’m not mad at you, ’cause you’re so stupid. So when they talk about Farrakhan, call me a hater, you know they do, call me an anti-Semite — stop it! I’m anti-termite! I don’t know nothing about hating somebody because of their religious preference.”
Twitter spokesperson confirms to me that it has actioned @LouisFarrakhan‘s 2018 tweet comparing Jewish people to termites, which violates new rule prohibiting dehumanizing language against religious groups. Farrakhan will be unable to tweet until the tweet is removed.
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 9, 2019
CNN’s Oliver Darcy first reported that the video is no longer visible on his profile and an error message appears, “Sorry, you are not authorized to see this status,” and that Farrakhan will not be able to tweet until the video is taken down.
