Twitter accused of failing to act on ‘extreme content’ about black and Jewish people

Twitter has been accused of failing to act over “extreme content” after complaints about a post that suggested the boat that brought 500 workers from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago in 1948 should have “sunk” were rejected.

The same anonymous user also argued in a tweet that black and Jewish people could not be British.

Ahead of the anniversary, he saw a comment on Twitter offering “commiserations” and saying that the then-prime minister Clement Attlee “should have told the Royal Navy to sink it in the middle of the Atlantic”.

A further tweet, over which a complaint was submitted,  stated:“Should have sunk it just as we should be sinking the illegals coming to our shores.”

Social commentator Sunder Katwala, director of independent think tank British Future, raised concerns about Twitter’s apparent failure to act over extreme content as Windrush 75th anniversary commemorations took place this week.

On June 22, 1948, around 500 workers from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago arrived at Tilbury in Essex aboard the HMT Empire Windrush ship.

They were among the first of the Windrush generation – people who had travelled to the UK between 1948 and 1971 from Caribbean countries as part of a scheme to help fill post-war labour shortages.

Katwala told the PA news agency “It is very clear to me that Twitter is now taking the most extreme content considerably less seriously than two years ago.“How far that is a policy decision under new ownership and how far a reduction in staff capacity is less clear.

“The type of very extreme content they would take down when challenged is much more likely to stay up for much longer now. If the platform is not going to act, the case for external regulation gets stronger.”

Ahead of the Windrush  anniversary, he saw a comment on Twitter offering “commiserations” and saying that the then-prime minister Clement Attlee “should have told the Royal Navy to sink it in the middle of the Atlantic”.

The anonymous user had also argued that black and Jewish people could not be British.

Complaints about the user were rejected despite MPs receiving assurances in the past that such comments probably violated Twitter rules. Katwala was tagged in a further tweet by another user, which stated: “Should have sunk it just as we should be sinking the illegals coming to our shores.”

He said he had reported that offensive post too, but on Thursday had yet to receive a response from moderators.

He said “overt racism” like that would usually have consequences, yet public figures including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, ministers and MPs “face daily racism because of the failures of social media platforms”.

“So you can’t participate in public space on equal terms without experiencing racism, even though in every other sphere of life, if you’re on the train, on the bus, or in the playground, or in business, people can’t do that anymore, because we have social norms and we uphold them.

“There’s no enforcement at all of the most basic social norms even when put in the most vitriolic terms,” he said.

Allowing the views of a tiny minority to be amplified on social media skewed how the younger generation saw change in the real world, he suggested.

They simply do not “believe that progress has happened” because it appeared as if society was “going backwards, not forwards”, he said.

Katwala has recently published a new book, How To Be A Patriot, which is a personal account of what it is to be British.

Twitter has been contacted for comment.