Twitter has suspended the account @ANTIFA_US following a tweet promoting violence against civilians. The threats and subsequent suspension add fuel to the nationwide debate of the necessity of riots, and highlight the dangers of misinformation.
Across America, peaceful protests are turning into riots and looting scenarios for reasons no one can truly pin down. Sometimes, the source appears to be police instigating violence against protesters, as depicted in online videos showing officers deploying tear gas into crowds of people standing still, holding signs. Other times, the riots have started from boiled over frustration. Either way, the turmoil has once again placed Antifa, an anti-fascist movement, in the spotlight.
Antifa's decentralized nature means that it's hard to designate a leader or to label one person as being in charge of planning. The account @ANTIFA_US posted to Twitter yesterday, with a message saying that the plan for that night was to move into suburban areas and "take what's ours". Twitter quickly suspended the account as such a threat violates the platform's policies. Twitter's rules literally begin by saying the company doesn't allow posting impending violence or threatening harassment against other people, and its enforcement policy explains that it's more likely to issue penalties if the threats are toward a large group of people.
This Could Be Another Case of Misinformation
Twitter was certainly right to suspend the @ANTIFA_US account for what was a clear violation of its policies. However, there's a great chance this post was fake. Firstly, Antifa is a decentralized group of activists so it operates in local "charters". The account names are almost always tied to a specific city or area, and rarely just designate "US". Antifa groups also don't capitalize the name usually, because it's a name and not an acronym. Beyond that, Antifa doesn't generally engage in broad threats or planned acts of violence. While some Antifa pages retweet videos that advocate for looting large businesses and protecting small ones, the group is more focused on spreading information about what it considers fascism. There are myriad Antifa-supporting Twitter accounts and none of them recognize @ANTIFA_US as a part of the group. Most importantly, while this is something that can't be verified since the account is now suspended, numerous sources within the anti-fascism community claim the account was only created to post that tweet and stir up outrage.
Unfortunately, that appears to be exactly the case. A quick search for "antifa_us" on Twitter shows that many people believe the tweet and are either in fear of their homes being invaded by protesters or preparing to defend themselves with guns if necessary. This has all the makings of a misinformation campaign designed to rile up specific political demographics. More directly, this looks like a fake Antifa account made so that right-leaning people could feel threatened and react with anti-protest, anti-#BlackLivesMatter sentiments. Posts like these are often used as a catalyst so that people who otherwise wouldn't have a socially acceptable reason to be angry at a well-meaning protest can feel like they have the moral high ground. This kind of misinformation is often used by politicians and other organizations to weaponize people's perceived victimhood and push them toward certain ideologies.
Source: Twitter, Twitter Rules