(Jewish Group) Twitter Gave Free Rein for Jack Posobiec To Publish Antisemitic Hate & Disinformation
Twitter enabled OANN correspondent Jack Posobiec’s rise by giving him space to promote hate and mislead the public without facing consequences, Hatewatch has determined in a comprehensive review of his account history.
The social media giant publishes a public facing list of its rules, which says it forbids promoting hate and violent extremism. Posobiec targeted Jewish journalists with antisemitic hate, as Hatewatch detailed in a story about his links to the white supremacist movement. Twitter also maintains rules about authenticity. Posobiec presented himself on Twitter as being “fmr CBS News” for more than half a year during 2016 and 2017, but CBS News told Hatewatch he never worked for them. Despite this, Twitter verified Posobiec’s account in April 2017, giving him an appearance of authority on their website. One of the first things he did with the authority Twitter granted him was share an apparently baseless story, “SHOCK: London Police Chief Appears to Give Tips How to Assassinate Trump During Visit.”
Posobiec tweets at a staggering rate. Archives show he tweeted about 93,000 times as of June 30, 2018, not including posts he deleted. By June 30, 2020, he had tweeted just under 152,000 times, or around 60,000 times in two years. Data from the Pew Research Center suggests that a “prolific user” of Twitter publishes 138 tweets per month. Posobiec tweeted or retweeted content 2,500 times per month over the last two years, or around 18 times more than what Pew depicted as a prolific Twitter user. Posobiec’s efforts to flood the platform with content have resulted in a growing audience. He is on pace to attain one million Twitter followers by the end of 2020.
Posobiec’s Twitter account has endured in the face of public outcry over #Pizzagate and other stunts. He told Richard Spencer over text message in November 2016 that his account had been temporarily suspended at some point in the past, possibly when operating his first handle, @AngryGOTFan, but he did not explain how it happened. Hatewatch was unable to find any instance of Posobiec’s account being even temporarily suspended since he first became publicly associated with President Trump.
Twitter responded to Hatewatch’s request for comment to this investigation by noting that Posobiec is not “currently” in violation of their rules. Twitter did not respond to a prompt from Hatewatch inquiring whether “currently” referred to Twitter posts that Posobiec has since deleted. Either way, Twitter’s response appears to suggest a misunderstanding of how Posobiec has weaponized their platform, publishing hateful or deceptive material, allowing it to spread and then removing it to avoid facing repercussions. Twitter also ignores the degree to which Posobiec continues to spread hate and disinformation on their platform. The Daily Beast published a story on June 3 suggesting that Posobiec pushed a hoax about people planting pipe bombs in Washington, D.C., amid antiracist demonstrations across the country. Posobiec also used Twitter to appear to promote white vigilantism in response to civil unrest during the same demonstrations, as Hatewatch demonstrates below.
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