Twitter has been diligently working to curb harassment and abuse on its platform, but it turns out one pretty racist ad slipped through the cracks.
The micro-blogging service has apparently been displaying a rather questionable promoted post, advertising a certain white supremacist website called The New Order, Gizmodo reports.
The ad has since been purportedly removed from Twitter, but users were quick to grab a screenshot of the offensive post.
.@twitter I can't believe anything still surprises me, but why the fuck am I seeing nazi ads on this website pic.twitter.com/jtKKnn8XR5
— Ariana Lenarsky (@aardvarsk) November 16, 2016
The account responsible for the racist tweet – namely, Public Outreach (@NEW_ORDER_1488) – is now suspended.
Twitter’s ad policy strictly prohibits “Hate speech or advocacy against an individual, organization or protected group based on race, ethnicity, national origin, color, religion, disability, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity” and more.
A spokesperson for the micro-blogging service has since responded to the controversy, remarking that it is company policy not to “comment on individual accounts, for privacy and security reasons.”
Twitter has put in continuous efforts to bridle instances of offensive behavior on its platform. Two years ago the the service launched a ‘mute’ feature that allowed users to block abusive individuals from showing up in their feed.
In an attempt to further fend off abuse, yesterday the micro-blogging service rolled out another ‘mute’ functionality which lets you filter out certain keywords and expressions from popping up in your timeline.
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