UPDATE, 4.30am: British artist and rapper Wiley, who sparked outrage last week with a series of anti-Semitic posts on social media, has been permanently banned from Twitter. Yesterday Facebook and its Instagram service deleted accounts belonging to the musician, whose genuine call is Richard Cowie.
Twitter also apologized for a delay in its action in combating offensive messages.
“Following further investigation, our groups have permanently suspended the bill for repeated violations of our hateful conduct policy. Let’s be clear: hateful behavior surely has no place in our service and we strongly condemn anti-Semitism. We regret that you did it Will not pass any faster and will continue to evaluate the stage internally,” the service said.
British citizen The Guardian was also criticized today when, in an opinion piece similar to Wiley’s story, he used a photo of rapper Kano. Since then, the paper has updated the article with a new image.
Earlier, on July 27, outrage over Twitter’s apparent lack of action to combat anti-Semitism led many high-level figures to boycott the platform for 48 hours.
The dispute was sparked through British rapper and dirt artist Wiley, who on Friday posted a series of tweets, as well as posts on other social networking sites, which were widely branded offensive. In tweets, he cited anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and compared the Jewish network to the Klu Klux Klan.
The rapper was removed through his A-List Management representatives and many messages were deleted via Facebook’s Twitter and Instagram for violating his terms of service. However, the fact that the offensive messages took about 48 hours to eliminate caused a backlash, with the actress and Tracy-Ann Oberman leading the rate by calling for a boycott with the hashtags #NoSafePlaceForJewHate and 48HoursSilence.
Many celebrities came together leaving Twitter for two days at nine a.m. BRITISH time on Monday, July 27. Also on board are Irvine Welsh, comedian Robert Webb, The Apprentice presenter Alan Sugar, singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor and actor Jason Isaacs.
Here are a variety of his tweets:
I’m so used to anti-Semitic hate theories, cool animated movies and government conspiracy, crazy melodies, leftist, moderate middlemen that I’ve long since hoped to replace them online or in life.
Maybe a window. #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate https://t.co/FxkLZLmXva
– Jason Isaacs (@jasonsfolly) July 26, 2020
– Jay Rayner (O jayrayner1) July 27, 2020
– Armando Iannucci (@Aiannucci) 27 July 2020
– Robert Rinder (@RobbieRinder) July 26, 2020
– Dawn French (@Dawn_French) 27 July 2020
– Sophie Ellis-Bextor (@SophieEB) 27 July 2020
– Robert Webb (@arobertwebb) July 27, 2020