Twitter has taken the step of suspending the accounts of both the leader, Paul Golding, and deputy leader, Jayda Fransen, of far-right group Britain First. Fransen shared anti-Muslim videos which were controversially retweeted by Donald Trump earlier this month, causing the Prime Minister, Theresa May, to make a statement via a spokesperson explaining why the President of the United States should not be promoting tweets from extreme political groups.
The move comes as Twitter revises its anti-abuse rules. The platform has faced repeated accusations that it has, historically, not done enough to protect people being targeted by abuse and hate speech online.
Indeed, only today did Yvette Cooper MP who chairs the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee condemn Twitter for failing to remove anti-Semitic and other offensive tweets as the committee heard evidence from executives at Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Twitter’s new guidelines, announced in October, are undoubtedly long overdue, the question is whether they will go far enough. What the site terms ‘hateful images or symbols’ are now banned in users’ profiles and biographies and associating with other accounts that promote violence could lead to deactivation and, even, ‘permanent suspension’ from the site.
To put the deletion of Jayda Fransen’s account into context: she didn’t just disseminate hate via Twitter (though you might argue this alone would have been reason to deactivate her), she has been convicted of hate crimes and, more than that, faces further charges. In September, this year Fransen was charged with not one, two or three, but four counts of religious harassment. In 2016, she was convicted after she abused a Muslim woman wearing hijab.
In recent months, Twitter has also removed the blue verification tick from some far-right leaders, such as Tommy Robinson, former leader of the English Defence League (EDL).
Twitter have saidthey hope the new regulations will ‘reduce the amount of abusive behaviour and hateful conduct’ on the platform. ‘If an account's profile information includes a violent threat or multiple slurs, epithets, racist or sexist tropes, incites fear, or reduces someone to less than human, it will be permanently suspended’, they went on to explain.
There will be those who will attempt to argue that Twitter’s new rules and regulations impinge on their right to free speech. However, finally Twitter is sending users who promote racist, sexist, abusive or hateful content that doing so will no longer be defensible under freedom of speech. Online, as in real life, what you say and what you do has consequences.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.