Right-wing figures and extremists are testing Meta’s content moderation policies and posting slurs and other forms of hate speech on Meta’s Twitter alternative. After Meta’s new app Threads went live, right-wing and fringe figures signed up for the new Twitter alternative and began posting slurs and other forms of hate speech on their accounts in an attempt to challenge Meta’s content moderation practices. On July 5, Meta released Threads, a companion app to Instagram, as a “Twitter Killer” to seemingly capture users dissatisfied with the chaos that has plagued Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover. As Threads is currently anchored to Instagram, users must comply with Instagram’s Community Guidelines, as well as additional related policies from Meta. In the last year, Meta, along with other major social media platforms, has noticeably deprioritized its content moderation and user safety practices. Instagram specifically has a long history of allowing hate speech and misinformation to prosper on the app, including permitting virulently anti-LGBTQ accounts, far-right extremists, and right-wing advertisers to post false and harmful rhetoric. Instagram has also failed to adequately moderate many aspects of its platform, with users easily sidestepping moderation with story features, the “link-in-bio loophole,” commerce functions, and comments sections. Right-wing figure ALX said Threads is an “Instagram comments section” — and right-wing users are already treating it in a similar way. Several accounts on Threads, including that of virulent antisemite Andrew Torba and others seemingly affiliated with the Groyper movement (led by white nationalist Nick Fuentes), have already employed the practice of replying letters to one another’s comments in order to spell out a slur together. Within 24 hours of Threads’ release, right-wing and fringe figures signed up for the platform, including white nationalist Richard Spencer and Nazi supporters. Fuentes, who claims to have been banned from Meta’s platforms, announced in a livestream on July 6, “I signed up for it last night. I made a fake Instagram. I got on a fake Thread.” He went on to instruct his followers to “try and build a big account. I mean, if you get in early, maybe some of you guys can blow up and red pill some people on there.”
via mediamatters: Far-right figures, including Nazi supporters, anti-gay extremists, and white supremacists, are flocking to Threads