Kanye West Is Suspended from Twitter After Posting a Swastika

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/business/media/kanye-west-twitter-suspension.html

by mhb • 4 years ago

38 99 4 years ago

scarface743• 4 years ago

Why? I’m definitely not pro Nazi and I am a minority. But why is posting hate speech a bridge too far for a “free speech” hard liner as Musk pretends to be?

pubby• 4 years ago

Musk wants advertiser money back.

ZeroGravitas2• 4 years ago

I believe Kanye posted some private comms between them on Parler or Truth Social. I've not read them but it might include some of his reasoning.

ethanbond9• 4 years ago

Private comms between Musk and Kanye was Musk quoting the Bible (?) as giving him the authority to decide whether Kanye's Swastikarofdavid is "love" or not.

No joke.

nailer15• 4 years ago

The swastika is associated with racial violence and violence is always something Musk has said he will not allow.

scarface743• 4 years ago

And claiming that an election was stolen that actually caused some idiots to storm a government building and putting the VP of the United States in danger is not associated with violence?

quantified3• 4 years ago

Interesting. Look up the Boer flag, of Musk's South Africa.

ethanbond9• 4 years ago

Because Elon doesn't actually have an ounce of moral intelligence. Like virtually every other thing that has happened with this whole takeover, he appears not to have really thought about the problem for more than 30 seconds.

This was evident even before a "tricky" case came up. His opening salvo was "free speech reigns," then immediately "well, law of the land matters," then "wait I guess I didn't think about how to handle variations in laws..."

raspberry13377• 4 years ago

It's humoring how many geniuses there are on the internet with the full authority to denounce the intelligence of the worlds currently richest man.

rsynnott3• 4 years ago

I assume it's finally beginning to dawn on Elon that maybe everyone on twitter won't pay $8 to see a sea of swastikas, and he will need those advertisers after all.

paxys7• 4 years ago

So much for "free speech absolutism" I guess. Does the first amendment have an exception for swastikas that I don't know about? Musk is quickly learning that he cannot pick fights with Apple and corporate advertisers while being tens of billions of dollars in debt.

mindslight3• 4 years ago

By taking on obscene amounts of debt for what amounts to a personal project, Elon Musk has made himself the poorest man in the world.

raspberry13377• 4 years ago

The debt is put on Twitter, just like when you buy a house you can put the house itself as insurance for the debt. Elon Musk is still the richest man in the world, your own input to this forum however remains very poor.

nailer15• 4 years ago

No. Banning someone because they posted the symbol of a group that murdered millions of people based on their race is very different from banning them because they posted “men are not women”.

paxys7• 4 years ago

So symbols are now banned on Twitter? Can I post a pirate flag? Skull and crossbones? The flag of the Chinese communist party?

Also who was banned for posting "men are not women"?

zoklet-enjoyer2• 4 years ago

Raelians murdered millions of people?

llamaimperative• 4 years ago

Right, so "so much for free speech absolutism" is exactly right. Turns out even Elon has a line that is well short of "law of the land." Because, fucking obviously.

triceratops2• 4 years ago

Nazis didn't take very kindly to homosexual or transgendered people either.

SanjayMehta2• 4 years ago

West posted a Raelian symbol, not a Hakenkreuz.

pipeline_peak4• 4 years ago

There’s a lot of options between woke hyper censorship and 4chan-like social media

We both know this has nothing to do with Apple, don’t be ridiculous…

Edit : like Sandi's replied below, it's been confirmed https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1598090996281413638?s=46...

paxys7• 4 years ago

Apple threatened to ban Twitter from the app store, Musk met with Tim Cook, deleted all his tweets critical of Apple, and then reversed his stance on moderation and banning. Sure, this has nothing to do with Apple at all...

ZeroGravitas2• 4 years ago

There was an article here the other day about how it's not a swastika, it's a hooked cross.

The people who actually use swastikas would like to be disassociated from the murderous megalomaniac who appropriated their symbol and used it is his white supremacist propaganda.

zoklet-enjoyer2• 4 years ago

It's not even that. It's a symbol from a UFO cult https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%ABlism#Religious_symbo...

krapp• 4 years ago

Which makes it really weird in context, because the Raelians are using it in its original non-violent sense, but Kanye West is explicitly pushing anti-semitic messaging. Which leads me to assume Kanye either thought he was being clever or just doesn't understand the intended context of the symbol he posted.

someNameIG2• 4 years ago

The symbol is the first image on google when you search for swastika Star of David (or it was, now Ye images are showing up lol), and given the context of his por-hitler and pro-nazi rant, I think it's far more likely than not Ye had no idea the UFO connection.

mindslight3• 4 years ago

Remember when ragequit forum drama was limited to the blast radius of the individual forum, and wasn't multiple weeks of coverage in the New York Times?

root_axis• 4 years ago

Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet

Very funny to see people twist themselves into a pretzel to explain why this ban is justified despite all of Elon's phony preening about "free speech" over the past few months. Elon paid good money to live out his twitter admin power fantasy and it's as simple as that. Free speech is a brand not a real principle that Elon cares about. The most ironic part is that Swastikas are still allowed on twitter, but personal attacks against Musk are a big no-no.

0x4d464d484• 4 years ago

Turns out that strategy doesn't work so well when it's from a celebrity's account.

SanjayMehta2• 4 years ago

The official story from Musk is "threats of violence."

And West posted the Raelian symbol, not a swastika.

Kanye West Is Suspended from Twitter After Posting a Swastika

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