Twitter Rejects Center for Immigration Studies Ads Critical of Illegal Immigration for ‘Hateful Content’

Twitter rejected four advertisements from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) on the basis of the tweets containing “hateful content” on Tuesday. The hateful content in question appears to be the phrase “illegal alien.” The platform later reversed the decision, calling it an “error.”

The CIS tried promoting several tweets through Twitter’s advertising program. Below are the CIS tweets labeled “hateful content” by Twitter:

In response to a CIS inquiry, Twitter’s customer service stated it had manually reviewed and reaffirmed its rejection of CIS’s requested promotion of the aforementioned tweets:

We’ve reviewed your tweets and confirmed that it is ineligible to participate in the Twitter Ads program at this time based on our Hateful Content policy. Violating content includes, but is not limited to, that which is hate speech or advocacy against a protected group.

In its initial comment on the matter, CIS indicated it was the use of the term “illegal alien” that Twitter considers hateful, despite the common usage of the term by legal entities including the Supreme Court.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey maintains that his company’s censorship and content management policies are not colored by left-wing or partisan Democrats biases. 

Update — After this article was published, Twitter reversed its decision, and called the decision to label “illegal alien” as hate speech an “error.”

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