NYC Mayor Adams slams Twitter as platform for hate speech and violence

It was a series of tweets that sent the NYPD and FBI on the trail of two Nazis looking to shoot up a synagogue, and it’s Twitter and other social media that Mayor Adams pointed to Monday as having to clean up their acts after the arrest of the suspects.

Adams and other top officials lauded the role that law enforcement and community groups played in the arrest of Christopher Brown and Matthew Mahrer, but they also laid part of the blame for the life-threatening situation they posed at the feet of social media — for not only giving them, but many others a platform to sow hate-fueled rhetoric and plans.

“Intentionally or unintentionally, social media has become a platform that has assisted with the organizing and the growth of hate in our country — and on the globe. And they need to become more responsible,” Adams said during a press conference in the City Hall rotunda. “They must reckon with the fact that their platforms are being used to spread hate and violence. It has left the point of just spreading hate. It is now being used as a tool to spread violence.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams holds his cell phone during a press conference in 2021.

Adams’ criticisms come as Twitter and its new CEO Elon Musk have taken fire for gutting the company of employees and reinstating former President Donald Trump to the platform. Trump was banned from Twitter last year for his tweets about the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection — tweets that the company deemed a violation of its policy against inciting violence. Musk reinstated Trump after posting a poll for tweeters on whether he should be allowed back.

Hip-hop star Kanye West was also recently reinstated to Twitter after being banned for anti-Semitic tweets. And Brooklyn Nets point guard Kyrie Irving was suspended from the NBA after tweeting a link to an anti-Semitic film. He resumed playing ball at the Barclay’s Center over the weekend.

 The Twitter logo is seen on a cell phone, Friday, Oct. 14, 2022, in Boston, Mass.

When asked about West and Irving — and Twitter’s decision to reinstate Trump — Adams declined to directly address those specific situations.

Law enforcement officials learned of Brown and Mahrer’s alleged plot after the Community Security Initiative, which monitors anti-Jewish hate speech online, alerted them to alarming chatter emitting from a now-defunct Twitter account allegedly controlled by Brown.

A “developing threat” to New York City’s Jewish community was averted by the arrests of two armed men at Penn Station on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022. Christopher Brown (pictured) of Riverhead, L.I. and Matthew Mahrer of the Upper West Side were busted in Penn Station late Friday night.

Mitchell Silber, the executive director of the security initiative, which is overseen by the UJA (United Jewish Appeal) Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council, said his group monitors sites like 4chan, Gab.com and 8chan, which now operates under the name 8kun, for hate speech and other indications that someone is planning to carry out violence.

“On Friday morning at about 10 o’clock, they identified through their analysis of the internet some alarming text from this individual talking about attacking a synagogue, talking about 10 o’clock at night, talking about potentially dying by the police,” he said. “We sent it to two places. We sent it to FBI New York, and we sent it to the NYPD intel division.”

The information Silber’s group culled from Twitter proved instrumental in capturing the two suspects.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (lower center) holds a press conference at City Hall in lower Manhattan, New York on Monday, Nov. 21, 2022, to discuss the coordinated effort that stopped the attack on the Jewish community.

Silber noted that in recent weeks, with Musk’s takeover, Twitter has come to resemble more fringe platform’s like 4chan and 8chan, which helped launch the debunked QAnon conspiracy theory. He blamed this on mass Twitter layoffs and the fact that many of the site’s content regulators no longer work there.

“There’s a lot of hate talk on Twitter that’s not being taken down. And so we have to treat Twitter in some ways like a 4chan, 8chan or Gab — that you might see some venomous, hateful commentary there that could lead to violence,” he said. “No one seems to be overseeing what content is being allowed on Twitter. So it is a serious problem that you hear manifest itself in a potential deadly attack.”

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