Seth Rogen Attacks Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey For Verifying Accounts Of White Supremacists
Seth Rogen has had enough with white supremacists on Twitter.
This week, the actor took to the platform to tell followers that he has been sending direct messages to the site’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, about the number of white supremacist accounts that the site has granted the verified blue checkmark. Rogen didn’t give any more details on the conversation, but Twitter has come under fire many times in the past for lending a platform to white supremacists.
As Mediaite noted last year, the social media platform faced a backlash for verifying the account of Jason Kessler, the organizers of the racially charged demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned deadly. Kessler also used Twitter to attack Heather Heyer, the counter-protester who was killed when one of the white supremacists allegedly drove his car through a crowd of people.
Kessler said Heyer was a “fat, disgusting communist” and claimed that her death was “payback time” for people who had been killed by communist regimes.
Twitter has gone on periodic “purges” where large swaths of white supremacists have had their accounts deleted, but Newsweek noted that these left many of the loudest and most notorious elements of the movement.
“Among those who remain active users of the site is alt-right provocateur Richard Spencer, who tweets to his 81,000 followers about getting ‘in the heads’ of American Jews,” the report noted. “So is Mike ‘Enoch’ Peinovich, a podcaster who fears ‘white genocide’ and has appeared at neo-Nazi events. Another is Jason Kessler, one of the white supremacists who helped to plan the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August. In addition to these men, the far-right conspiracy peddlers who produced the so-called Pizzagate lie on the platform, which may have led to a North Carolina man firing off an AR-15 rifle in a Washington, D.C., pizzeria in late 2016, are also still very much active.”
Seth Rogen spoke with the boss of Twitter about Nazis – and it didn't go well https://t.co/vszqwXlWjS
— The Independent (@Independent) July 4, 2018
A number of organizations and individuals have put pressure on Twitter to stop allowing this speech on its platform, though the site has been reluctant to make any large-scale changes. The site also offered no response to Rogen’s tweet calling for changes.
Seth Rogen has never been shy about speaking out against the far-right. Late last year, he refused to make an appearance on SiriusXM because of the platform’s support of Steve Bannon, the controversial former adviser to Donald Trump. Rogen also recently bragged that he turned down House Speaker Paul Ryan for a photograph.
