Hmm, similar vibe to Sergey Brin commenting on Google not blocking access to Nazi material etc. As a communication platform where do you draw the line on freedom of speech vs inciting racial hatred?

Why should they remove it? Yes the content is vile but so is a lot of content – if we block that what else do we need to block.

The Chinese don’t like anything related to Tiananmen Square, do we remove any Twitter references to that too.

Fine if you personally block accounts, that’s up to you but it’s not Twitter’s responsibility to police what people write online!

I can understand nazis being a sensitive subject in Germany, but the tweeter in question doesn’t appear to be particularly serious (as far as I can tell from reading a Google Translator version of his page) and seem to be just going for shock effect by shouting hitler over and over again, rather the more serious issue of actually following nazi principles.

Pretty sure you didn’t see our post about it but Twitter responded to the girl who tipped us about it saying that they wouldn’t be policing accounts. IF you want it removed, block and report it. The more people that to do that the more chance it gets removed completely.
http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/03/16/twitter-remove-pro-nazi-twitter-account/

Free speech.

Funny how Internet nerds only support free speech for opinions they agree with.

Twitter is an American company and isn’t bound by German censorship laws. So no, while the account are horrendous they shouldn’t be banned. Freedom of Speech has an ugly side to it, but if you ever dabble in the idea of curving certain speech then you no longer have the full freedom. The only consequence the account owner should have to endure is people choosing not to follow the account.

Am I the only one who never heard of this account before reading about it here on TechCrunch? Maybe I do a better job of self censoring my own twitter stream.

Blocked… get rid of that scum

Do they block extremist Muslim accounts?

ahem

“be a force for good”

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/15/twitteruh-oh-not-another-do-no-evil-company/

You should actually leave them alone. By blocking them, you only feed the reasons they feel the way they do. Besides, you can’t hide from it, bury your head in the sand.
Ignoring something is not the same as dealing with it.

We would be ignorant and as fascist as them if we blocked them.

I am of colour by the way…

Interesting news, thanks! The account exists for about 24 hours. At the moment, there are no news in germany about it. Hope, Twitter will react fast….

Tough call here. Nazi, not cool. But the line of freedom of speech? For more Twitterness, peep Twitterholic Ashton Kucher, Twitter CEO Evan Williams, others at SXSW. http://bit.ly/mbsxsw

As of now, this account only has 9 followers. It is really worth giving this “story” so much attention?

I think if you dislike the content you should ignore it but I can’t agree with having it removed or blocked.

Heil Hitler 88 is a small French group that is currently on trial for weapons possession and creation of an “army” to kill the “scum” in French suburbs. That’s a shame but such ideologies still exist.

Are people really wasting their time feeding the Nazis? Just let them be. It’s a small noisy group with no power. Does anyone think they will disappear because they are not on Twitter anymore? What is a “win” here?

There are actual problems with actual powerful organized groups that are saying pretty much the same thing. But they are protected because their hate speech is protected as “religious”. These are the people we need to worry about. The neo-nazi fuckers are just some dumb kids.

But.. Also with these groups, be it christian fundamentalists, muslim fundamentalists or nazis, disabling their Twitter accounts is laughable as a “victory”. The problems are way bigger than just that they have Twitter & Facebook accounts.

Inciting?? Let people bitch, complain, spew whatever they want. Depending on the window you’re looking through it means different things.

I have free will. Individuals are the only ones responsible for their actions.

Our heroes are terrorists in other parts of the world and vice versa.

I have to say this is a subject that I’m a bit torn on and have yet to arrive at a conclusion that is satisfactory. While the hate is deeply appalling on every level, it is a bit scarier to begin the descent into either self or government censorship on the internet. I believe in an open and free internet (and offline speech as well), one that tolerates my thoughts and theirs. Extremist ideas will fizzle into the fringe. The free publicity for that fringe such as this post does as much as the thousands of articles on the Westboro Baptist Church… ignore it and it’ll go away on its own except for the extremely small minority who will gravitate towards that thinking regardless of whether @Heil_hitler_88 exists or not.

What a slippery slope you’re advocating here. Freedom of speech applies to all. Even those we may not agree.

[...] the original post: Nazis get onto Twitter, but they're not being blocked Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: community-right, german, nazi-pigs, now-which, [...]

KeinGott means No God…what an idiot!

Maybe the solution is to have an independent party made up of active social users from different countries create a constitution which would allow social sites to not have to decide what is acceptable or not. Why is it always the anti jewish stuff that gets mentioned on TC and never the other hate speech? Seems like it is ok to say what you want unless it is about Jewish people.

I’m for free speech, and I have exercised my right to block that account and not view their updates.

I like this. It’s not companies stepping in and playing censor, it is people actively selecting their community. It’s kinda like a social networking version of boycotting. It’s kinda’ cool to think about.

He has 9 followers, who cares… He was totally unexistent until u wrote this post. Now everyone knows about it. Bad.

Easy way to be covered on techcrunch uh?

When they censored the Ku Klux Klan, I said nothing, because it wasn’t me.

When they censored the Nazi skinheads, I said nothing because it wasn’t me.

When they censored the Holocaust deniers, I said nothing, because it wasn’t me.

When at last they censored me, there was no-one left to speak up for me.

Then references to US military forces or Israeli forces should be treat the same way, there’s not much of a difference on what they do.

@Butcher: Can you explain WTF you mean by, “needs to be addressed”?

Again w/ the stance against freedom of speech when the speech is garbage you (and most sane people) disagree with. Meh.

Are you saying your only friends are the Ku Klux Klan, Nazi skinheads and Holocaust deniers?

@Etrigan: “When at last they censored me, there was no-one left to speak up for me.”

Except that the Klan and the Nazis would never speak up for me, so I’m not worried about that in the least.

As a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I’d love to see them blocked, but until that happens, if it does, I’m sure they love the publicity you guys are giving them.

Dear Techcrunch:

Why don’t you try ignoring this kind of bullshit, rather than publicizing it?

@Etrigan: it’s not censorship, because Twitter is not the government. Twitter is free to remove anything they choose for any arbitrary reason they choose. You are welcome to select another venue for your hatred.

I do find it ironic that when Apple doesn’t approve apps a shitstorm erupts in the comments, but when it’s Nazi assholes on Twitter, they can’t delete the tweet fast enough.

Are you banking on white supremacists to speak up for you?

It is called free speech. No one cares about some ranting Nazi or other racist pig.

Don’t whine about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#The_slippery_slope_as_fallacy

Voltaire is dead.

That’s deep, man.

I am a from a racial minority living in Germany and I think blocking that account would be dangerous…
I’m against discrimination, I think nazi thinking is wrong (very wrong), but I do not feel offended by some uneducated “skinheads” posting on twitter. In fact, I found it fun (although I am not Jewish, this will be only an opinion for someone else “affected” by nazi philosophy).
I believe in free speech and in the intelligence of people. I also believe that in order to distinguish good from evil, we have to experience both, and twitter is one of the less dangerous ways to experience “evil” thinking.

No one is forcing you to follow offensive twitterers.

Live long and prosper.

or

http://lgo.mit.edu/blog/drewhill/files/voltron.jpg

(your choice.)

Relax Mike Arrington and Mike Butcher. The bad bad Nazis are not a threat. Deleting these accounts would be a tremendous blow to twitter. I would have no respect them if they did. Free Speech is very important.

So true.

You know, instead of posting such ridiculous articles, it would help to simply state how this is illegal here in the states. Is there any law which prevents this @Heil_Hitler_88 from speaking their mind? If not, I don’t think there is anything that twitter can or should do. What it does not require is moral policing from Techcrunch or anyone else.

to Etrigan:

FUCK YOU ASSHOLE

+1- It is the internet and hopefully free speech remains the norm not the outcast

Well ain’t that some recycled trite shit. “Then they came for me” – sure, if you’re a Nazi in countries that aren’t fundamentalist about “free speech”. If you’re not a Nazi, you’d do just fine in those democracies, and nobody would come for you no matter how corny your comments are.

You didn’t read the post did you… ~sigh.

burning tweets today, next step: burning books?

Philosophical arguments aside, a retarded obscure German account with 10 followers is now getting US exposure (and possibly traction) because of this post.

Ah, demanding the ban of opinions we disagree. How… Nazi?

Free speech only exists if we protect speech we disagree with. I’m much more saddened that people can’t comprehend this than that there’s a few neo-Nazi loons running around.

As long it’s not calling for violent action, let it be.

Et tu, Mike? As a brit, i thought you would tolerate freedom of speech a little more.

This is as utterly moronic as the Czech Republic banning a fascist party last month.

Extreme right-wing parties don’t do very well in elections but they do quite well in revolutions.

Extreme right-wing micro-bloggers don’t do very well in the marketplace but they do quite well when TechCrunch and liberal do-gooders promote them.

The problem is that if you want Twitter to SHUT that account, you shoudn’t post about this in first place. nonsense.

zomg he said something that hurt my feelings wah wah!!!!!!

grow the fuck up pussy, noone gives a flying fuck about nazis on twitter. actually i think its hilarious, im gonna follow him

Why does it matter if it’s illegal in Germany? They aren’t in Germany. They also aren’t in Thailand, where it’d be illegal to disrespect the monarchy. Or in Burma, where people have been jailed for disseminating footage of a cyclone. Or in Iran, where it’s illegal to criticize the country’s religious leaders.

Shall we insist that online services descend to the lowest common denominator? If any country outlaws something, we should simply expect Twitter, Google, etc to comply?

I dislike a lot of things about America, but our exceptionally strong freedom of speech laws aren’t one of them.

[...] hat sich auch schon Techcrunch und thenextweb diesem Thema angenommen ohne sichtlichen [...]

>>So the German Twitter community is trying
>> to get Twitter to block the account with
>> this retweeting.

That’s Germany.. all I can say. So stupid. I mean serious, that’s the INTERNET. Free speech. If someone doesn’t like it (or doesn’t know free speech, like Germans), they should just LEAVE the Internet.

OMG DID YOU SEE THE NEW LADY GAGA VIDEO WITH BEYONCE!?!?!?

FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERCE!

Nazis were condemned as war criminals in an international court. It is internationally agreed they committed genocide. I think it’s wise to draw the line against speaking favorably or tolerating this kind of ideology and behavior.

It is blocked now (18.00h 3.16.2010)

Well, it looks like the account has already been deleted. At least, I’m getting the “That account doesn’t exist” error.

If they did delete the account, that troubles me. Racism and bigotry are despicable, but also despicable is to place limits on what is acceptable speech. If Twitter is to now delete such accounts, then where does the boundary of acceptability lie? Are a few racist tweets acceptable? Are racist jokes acceptable? Are ironic racist jokes acceptable (like South Park)? And then also, are they going to treat Stalin on the same level as Hitler? Both were tyrants responsible for mass murder, and yet Stalin usually receives more favorable treatment.

As a private company, Twitter definitely has the right to say what is acceptable and what is not. In the event they deleted the account, I just hope they spell out what in their minds is acceptable.

surely a better way to put it is; ”I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.
because the way you put it, everyone in the world is either a nazi, kkk or a history denier.
i hate what these people stand for but they can stand for it all they want, because logic, common sense and intellectual arguement are the strongest and only tools against them as far as i’m concerned.

Hey

Account seems now inexistent or suspended.

Twitter finally took care of this?

Account deleted!

… and now the account is gone. HAHA… FREE SPEECH GONE ALREADY. Scary…

serious question but why should they be blocked/deleted? the nazis came to power by blocking opposition is that not the same

“The trouble is, Twitter is in the U.S., ” and the U.S. has that pesky First Amendment to the Constitution. And we all know how that amendment is always getting in the way of do-gooders and well-meaners.

Your freedom stops where my freedom starts.

how is a hate twitter account violating your freedom?

Just because you see something you don’t like, does that mean we should all jump up and say BAN! DELETE! BLOCK!

After we’ve gone through and deleted every Nazi, who comes next? Maybe pro-abortion people? I don’t personally like their views, so let’s ban them also. Also – animal activists- they are terrorists- BAN THEM.

I know about the laws in Germany. It is also illegal to be gay in many countries. Should Twitter ban all gay tweeters so it can correspond to the laws of these nations (since they can access Twitter)?

Do you see the flaw in your premise, Mr. Butcher?

Butcher – that’s a violent sounding name. You should be banned for that.

How is this a problem?

I value free speech far more than my comfort zone, you Europeans just don’t get it, do you?

It was 70 years ago, are you seriously concerned about a resurgence in nazi-scale genocide again?

Oh wait, that’s right, it took you 2 years to respond to Bosnia with US help while 200k people were slaughtered but oh noes someone is talking about Hitler on the interwebs, red alert !

Let me clarify: Anyone has the freedom to voice an opinion. If you don’t like X, Y or Z, then fine.

However, this freedom stops once what you say or do is no longer an opinion.

To incite violence upon a particular (group of) person(s), is not an opinion.

And if they failed to act against groups like the KKK and if they failed to fight the Nazis in WWII, you would probably be dead anyway. But at least you would have your ‘freedom of speech’, so it would be worth it.

So it’s the United State’s fault that there are Nazi’s on Twitter, despite Germany? Ha. Ha.

the account no longer exists.

however, a search results in countless users somehow incorporating “Hitler”. Should all these be banned as well?

@Myatu Completely agree

[...] | TechCrunch Europe Comparte este [...]

LOL. With the argument that pouring out hatred and encouraging violence is ‘free speech’ you also have to let all the spammers and scammers stay in the game. It’s just free speech if they spam you on twitter. It’s also just free speech to send you a trojan link via DM. You don’t have to click on it, right? Wondering why they get deleted so often? Oh yeah, and it’s also free speech to call black people the n-word and wish them a horrible death, right? Let some KKK nut come to twitter and see how fast it gets deleted.

Come on, people. Isn’t it sad that us Germans seem to be the only people still interested in fighting Nazism? That has nothing to do with the ‘Holocaust denying law’ – it probably wouldn’t even fit in this case. Hate crimes and promoting them are also forbidden in the U.S. Where does the sudden double standard come from? I *expect* twitter users to report accounts of that kind. It’s not even anything special.

How was the Hitler account promoting violence?

Would anybody of actually cared if people hadn’t started tweeting about it? – by doing so they gave hh88 a far wider platform

If you want to be offended by stuff on the net you could spend your entire life being offended. Better to ignore, maybe ridicule because attempts to censor the internet have never worked and mostly cause more publicity for the info that’s supposed to be suppressed (see the Streisand effect)

“Isn’t it sad that us Germans seem to be the only people still interested in fighting Nazism?”

The only real difference between Christianity and Nazism ideolgy is the Racist bit…

… and when you go back a few decades, looking how the christians treated native populations…

You see it now ?

One more political post from techcrunch.

Why not read a little history before writing up these type of articles?

Are US political accounts blocked too? Just read a few facts about the USA:
- started on a criminal revolution by criminals (today they would be called terrorists)
- the Native Americans were killed in such large numbers that 70% of the race was killed
- During WWII, the USA killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in nuclear attacks
- The USA sponsored terrorism in Central America
- Americans financed the IRA in its terror campaigns

I did not even mention Iraq, or the thousands of Human Rights convictions against the USA.

I wonder if TC will filter out this post like so many American forums, to try and stop the truth from being heard.

I wonder if TC will filter out your comment as well.

This is like the ultimate internet post in that it starts at Godwin’s law and gets progressively weirder. A few points:

1. Dear fellow compatriot Germans, just because you’re trying to be holier than thou on all things Hitler doesn’t make up for it. Just sayin’. Clearly you still have issues.

2. Everyone who compares Americans to Hitler above is an idiot.

2a. Everyone who compares anyone to Hitler above is an idiot.

3. Anyone who mentioned censorship or freedom of speech above hasn’t quite understood those concepts. Censorship is when you’re forbidden to write about it anywhere. It’s not when you’re forbidden to write about it on Twitter. Learn the difference.

4. I agree that a clearly articulated acceptable use policy is helpful to communities. People need to know where the line is.

5. Have I mentioned you’re feeding the troll? There’s a kid in a basement in Arkansas right now feeling pretty special about his Twitter account right now. Learn 2 Internet.

We need to delete the accounts of people who disagree with us. They’re dangerous.

Who cares? Let the weasel have his Twitter account. It’s freedom of speech last time I checked. Just don’t follow him. How insulting is a teenager anyway?

You just won the “stupid comment of the week award”, how does that feel ?

On your #3: You are apparently an idiot by your own definition. Your definition of censorship is false by all measures because of its narrow scope, and, thus, you are one of those people you claim don’t quite understand the concept. Study up on censorship before you proclaim to the world how much of a pretentious prick you are.

This is a bit of a worry! You would think this sort of thing would have disappeared since what happened all those years ago – people never learn!

Totally not feeding this troll either.

If you’re still wondering the value in free speech by having groups on Facebook that promote bigotry, etc, consider this:

Would you want to know if your neighbors were Klu Klux Klan Members, or Nazi sympathizers?

I would.

This is exactly what these people are doing. They are announcing to the world, of their own volition, their radical political leanings.

And frankly, I couldn’t be happier. Knowledge is power, and knowing who these crazies are is a key in the information age.

By knowing who they are, you can do two major things: refute their ideology on a more personal level, and failing that, avoid their delusional lives completely.

The last thing I want is for them to be able to “lurk” in society by keeping all their insane ramblings underground, where they can’t be exposed to rational arguments. That’s how shit goes bad — a bunch of people get together in a cellar somewhere and nobody knows about it and then it turns into some god awful event you see on the morning news.

At least when you know where they are and who they are you can keep them boxed into a little corner somewhere so they’re too weak to start something.

How is some idiot yammering on the web, something that can be banned in the first place? It does not look like he is threatening anyone.

He had 8 followers before you gave him publicity, how many does he have now? This is why the US system of free speech for all is superior, indifference actually has significantly reduced the impact of hate groups in the US, while in Germany the resurgence can in part be explained by the taboo nature of the far-right in that country.

You know what, we should block TechCrunch, it’s promoting Nazi’s !!!! nah ?

serious, Twitter.com is NOT promoting @heil_hitler88 , but TechCrunch …

so ok let’s block TechCrunch, and then later maybe Facebook coz they’re hosting evil holocaust revisionists, oh then yep maybe gmail and hotmail and yahoo mail all together because all these evil web services DO NOT block Nazis or any group of people who I hate , like my boss, or my bully friend Dan , and ok let me think now that we have all these stuffs blocked, why not having an org. called W3P (WWW Police) , with check points, watch towers , forced keyloggers – like CCTV, etc. etc. etc.

MASTERMINDS!!! THIS IS INTERNET !!!!! I N T E R N E T !!!!!

IF YOU CAN NOT TOLERATE DIFFERENT VOICES , JUST DISCONNECT AND MOVE TO THE NEAREST JUNGLE !

That’s a very, very good point.

It is not about free speach. We have got also laws in Germany, f.e. about discrimination. There have been a lot of terms in this account in german, which are not allowed by our condition. Anyway, the account is deleted .

[...] we can read in a article ‘Nazis get onto Twitter, but they’re not being blocked’, more and more extreme activists use Twitter to address and reach more and more people. All those [...]

[...] we can read in a article ‘Nazis get onto Twitter, but they’re not being blocked’, more and more extreme activists use Twitter to address and reach more and more people. All those [...]