Here’s How One Man Is Forcing Twitter to Confront Its Abuse Problem

He claims the social media giant ignored hundreds of his complaints.

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Despite various attempts to crack down on trolls and abusive behavior, Twitter remains a uniquely popular platform for unconstrained hateful, often violent rhetoric. It’s a pervasive problem, and the targets of vicious harassment aren’t left with too many options for stopping or punishing it. 

Shahak Shapia, a comedian living in Germany, claims he has attempted to report more than 300 anti-semitic and homophobic tweets that he received over the last six months. According to Shapia, most of his complaints were ignored. When a tweet was occasionally removed, Twitter failed to let him know. Fed up with Twitter’s overwhelming silence, he traveled to the company’s Hamburg offices with cans of spray paint in hand to force the social media giant to confront the very same hate tweets for themselves. To see what happened, watch the video below. 

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No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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