A Huge District Attorney's Office Just Exited Twitter

California DA cites rising hate speech
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 7, 2022 1:20 AM CST
Northern California's Largest County DA's Office Exits Twitter
The Twitter logo is seen on a cell phone, Friday, Oct. 14, 2022, in Boston.   (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

Citing rising hate speech on Twitter following Elon Musk's purchase of the platform, a California district attorney's office left the social network Tuesday. Jeff Rosen, DA for Santa Clara County—northern California's biggest county prosecutor's office—deactivated the office's official account, saying in a statement, "As Americans, we have the freedom to loudly express our political opinions and strongly disagree with each other. However, when that speech crosses the line into hatred, racism and antisemitism, all of our precious and hard fought freedoms are undermined and our democracy is weakened." He noted Musk's own use of an antisemitic "Pepe the Frog" meme, which Musk later deleted, KRON4 reports.

Rosen called on all DAs in the country to make the same move his office did. The NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League have also called on people to boycott Twitter due to Musk's takeover, which has been followed by a 58% rise in slurs against LGBTQ+ people when compared to the average for the rest of 2022. Slurs against Black people, meanwhile, more than tripled, CBS News reports. "Some think that allowing hatred, encouraging it, and standing beside it equates with free speech and constitutional liberty," Rosen says in his statement. "That is not a principled stand. That is complicity. That is what many Germans did in the 1930s and what many South Africans did in the 1980s. It is what Elon Musk is doing in the 2020s." (More Twitter stories.)

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