{"id":16609,"date":"2019-04-27T22:34:11","date_gmt":"2019-04-28T05:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=16609"},"modified":"2019-04-27T22:34:11","modified_gmt":"2019-04-28T05:34:11","slug":"quite-a-conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=16609","title":{"rendered":"QUITE A CONUNDRUM"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Twitter on Friday said it has suspended the campaign accounts for two candidates in the European Union that belonged to people who were previously banned from the platform.<\/p>\n<p>Twitter suspended the campaign accounts belonging to far-right anti-Muslim activist Tommy Robinson, who announced his candidacy for the European Parliament on Friday, and Carl Benjamin, a far-right British YouTuber who is running for Parliament.<\/p>\n<p>Twitter told The Hill that the accounts had been suspended for violating the platform&#8217;s terms of service.<\/p>\n<p>The suspensions of @trobinsonmep and @CarlUKIP were first reported by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/ommmscfgqttdpcptdkwqqdmmqfdntftvvlqgcrnlzqftj_cdgtccpdpftcclpttjjq.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=http:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/ommmscfgqttdpcptdkwqqdmmqfdntftvvlqgcrnlzqftj_cdgtccpdpftcclpttjjq.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1556421174119000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE2SxjE46JPlfaYJl8h0WgaVS3-PA\">BuzzFeed News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Robinson&#8217;s and Benjamin&#8217;s candidacies pose a conundrum for Twitter, as well as other social media platforms, which are important tools for political candidates during election cycles.<\/p>\n<p>Twitter and Facebook both typically leave up accounts and posts from political figures, even when they violate their community guidelines, citing the &#8220;newsworthiness&#8221; of their comments.<\/p>\n<p>But Facebook during a phone call with reporters earlier in the day said it was keeping its ban on Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/vmymdqrbyffncqcfnkhyynmmyrnzfrfttgybqjzgvyrfk_cdgtccpdpftcclpttjjq.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=http:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/vmymdqrbyffncqcfnkhyynmmyrnzfrfttgybqjzgvyrfk_cdgtccpdpftcclpttjjq.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1556421174119000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHAXu9VlY-jdrKJeTG1A1O4o22pQw\">BuzzFeed reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>YouTube recently placed restrictions on Robinson&#8217;s account after the far-right figure was banned from Facebook and Instagram for violating their anti-hate speech policies.<\/p>\n<p>Robinson founded the anti-Islamic English Defense League, which has previously organized violent protests against Muslims in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n<p>Benjamin, who goes by the name &#8220;Sargon of Akkad,&#8221; was suspended from Twitter and the crowdfunding site Patreon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Twitter on Friday said it has&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-science-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16610,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16609\/revisions\/16610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}