After their leaders were accused of misconduct and they were criticized for launching campaigns to start policing speech online, The Southern Poverty Law center recently fell under scrutiny from the public and associated partners like Twitter.
According to a report from the Daily Caller, Twitter decided to end its partnership with SPLC. The organization was listed as one of the members of the Trust and Safety Council established by Twitter as a consulting group that would help the social network control “hateful conduct and harassment.”
As mentioned by many political commentators, the SPLC appeared to recommend Twitter ban conservative ideas on the platform. Numerous defamation cases were brought against the SPLC including cases from Gavin McInnes and several other organizations and personalities. Conservative commentators and centrists criticized The SPLC for baseless accusations. Twitter was also criticized for their speech policing practices and banning conservative activists on their platform.
Richard Cohen and Morris Dees, the president of SPLC and co-founder of the organization respectively, resigned from their positions in SPLC after scandalous accusations of sexual misconduct and harassment from multiple female subordinates.
The SPLC has been under fire for quite some time. To top it all off, many people called out SPLC for toxic work culture and underpaying staffers significantly. The sexual misconduct scandal was the last straw and turned the public against the left-wing organization.
Despite all these scandals and accusations, the organization kept working together with Twitter and Facebook. While Twitter decided to cut ties with the controversial legal organization, Facebook still works with it. The SPLC promised that they would fix internal issues and work on transparency. The new management brought in Tina Tchen who was chief of staff under Michele Obama.
The new organization will no longer influence speech on Twitter, but its politics will remain a part of Facebook’s policies regarding “hate speech” and censorship. As you may know, The SPLC also provides consultations and recommendations to Google affecting how the massive video hosting service YouTube moderates user-generated content.
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