Surprised no one mentioned this yet, but last night, Twitter’s crackdown on fake news and disinformation ramped up to another level. Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, one of the most notorious peddlers of conspiracy theories on the Internet, has been banned.
Jim Hoft, founder and editor of the far-right publication The Gateway Pundit, was suspended from Twitter Saturday evening for violating the platform’s rules. The account, @gatewaypundit, no longer has a presence on Twitter, save for a message that indicates the account has been suspended. Prior to the suspension, the @gatewaypundit account had more than 375,000 followers.
A spokesperson for Twitter said, “The account was permanently suspended for repeated violations of our civic integrity policy.” The policy restricts users on the platform from sharing information that undermines elections and other civic processes, including sharing misinformation regarding the outcome of elections.
Frankly, this was several years overdue. As early as 2010, Hoft was branded “the dumbest man on the Internet” for practicing a form of journalism that amounted to culling dreck from Free Republic or email from his fans. Even some conservatives have condemned Gateway Pundit for its willful disregard for the truth.
Gateway Pundit’s tactics have actually put innocent third parties in harm’s way. For instance, it falsely accused a Washington Post web editor of taking pictures of Rex Tillerson’s notes during his confirmation hearing.
NBC News’ Ben Collins noted that Hoft falsely accused people of being terrorists.
Hoft even went as far as doxing the parents of Bloomberg reporter William Turton.
Hoft really lowered his game during the 2020 election. The German Marshall Fund branded it as the largest single source of disinformation shared by verified Twitter users in 2020. It frequently churned out all manner of baloney about Trump having the 2020 election being stolen from him—a claim that, based on the published record, Trump himself knew was false.
Indeed, it appears that the final straw for Twitter was his decision to tout a video purporting to show absentee ballots in Detroit being delivered several hours after the deadline—a claim that has been completely debunked by both the Detroit Free Press and Deadline Detroit. According to Hoft’s hometown paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Hoft himself claimed this was what got him booted from Twitter.
Sleeping Giants notes the obvious next steps—shutting down Gateway Pundit’s online store and getting Google to pull its ads.
Hoft is already whining about how those meanies at Sleeping Giants are out to silence conservatives. Um, Jim? You spewed fake news before it was even a term, and you put innocent people in harm’s way. You were long overdue for accountability. Suck it up.
Gateway Pundit is but one of many in a long list of right-wing sites that need to go down for conduct that breached every standard of decency that is known even as its dear one was railing about the mainstream media being the real enemy. Breitbart, Project Veritas, RedState and Charisma immediately come to mind. I repeat—Hoft’s banishment from Twitter was long overdue.