What the actual eff? For the second time since January, Twitter is running a promoted ad from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigrant organization designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Twitter already encourages abusive behavior by verifying hate group leaders and actual neo-Nazis while doing very little to protect their users—particularly black women and undocumented immigrants—from harassment. Earlier this year, the platform unveiled some safety features supposedly designed to cut down on trolls, but they’re just gonna go ahead and take money from these professional trolls anyway? Come on.
For years, FAIR received funding from a white supremacist organization founded by eugenicists with Nazi ties, while simultaneously backing California’s notorious anti-immigrant Prop. 187. Not to mention FAIR’s founder, eugenicist John Tanton, regularly “corresponded with Holocaust deniers, former Klan lawyers and the leading white nationalist thinkers of the era”:
In a 2000 U.S. Senate election in Michigan, FAIR, under [executive director Dan] Stein’s leadership, produced ads featuring side-by-side photos of Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.), a Lebanese American, next to Osama bin Laden and the question: “Why is Senator Abraham trying to make it easier for terrorists like Osama bin Laden to export their war of terror to any city street in America?” The smear campaign was in response to Abraham’s call for the issuance of more visas for immigrants with high-tech skills. Abraham was running against Tanton in the state’s GOP Senate primary. After the ads produced controversy, prompting some conservatives like Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) to resign as a member of FAIR, Stein stood by the ads, stating that they were not racist and that he thought Abraham was Jewish.
"With every change, we'll learn,” Ed Ho, vice president of engineering, recently said about Twitter working to make safety changes. No, you haven’t learned a damn thing.