The famous social media platform doesn’t let black businesses advertise on their website and celebrate black history on behalf of « hate and sensitive topics ».
This last Friday I had a pretty displeasant surprise when I realized my Twitter account was deemed ineligible to advertising because of « a policy violation by one or more users. ». I was using a few other platforms daily to advertise for Black Legacy’s products and never had any issues so I tried to understand what Twitter thought was a « policy violation ».
I sent a mail to the support team to ask why my account was suspended and they sent me a generic response showing which tweet was incriminated. This was this one :
It was a simple tweet promoting our Huey Newton « King » T-shirt and trying to encourage our community to know, celebrate and be proud of our History, as Black Legacy’s always do. I didn’t get why this tweet could be a problem so I I reached the support so they can give me the reasons that led to the suspension of all the advertising we initiated for our business, wondering which tweet would be a violation of any Twitter's conditions.
They sent me this mail to explain themselves :
How can a call to celebrate our History and a picture of Huey Newton can be deemed as « Hate, sensitive topics and violence » ? Do they want us to forget our History ? Do they try to say that our legacy is all hate and violence ?
I sent them several other mails to explain to me the reasons of this suspension and what they thought was shocking in this tweet, but I knew it was not a mistake on their part because they didn’t even answer once.
I began to have a doubt about Twitter’s intention so I contacted a few other friends who had businesses promoting Black Pride, Black Power or Black History. All of them who tried to advertise on Twitter had the same problem, their account was suspended after one day for « hate, sensitive topics and violence ». I think it is pretty obvious that Twitter tries to boycott black businesses by not letting us advertise on their platform !
Of course, you will tell me « You were not advertising on Twitter before so why do you complain ? ». That is not the problem, it is that I should be able to advertise on Twitter if I want to like every other business. Our ancestors fought so we can have black businesses and that we can be openly proud of our Legacy and History so we should not let a big company try to reduce us to silence and we won’t. Even though online advertising might appear as a useless tool as a customer, it is a weapon that our businesses should have the right to use as any other business!
Is it simply plain racism from a white owned business which doesn’t believe black people can do business or something on a larger scale to be sure we can’t raise above the status they gave us ?
Only one thing is sure, they think we are threatening to them.
Tarek
That is so sad.