Twittergate

Overview

Twittergate refers to the discovery of thousands of accounts involved in the circulation of child pornography on Twitter in late November 2016. After news of the investigation circulated on 4chan and Reddit, critics accused the social networking site of focusing its attention on silencing controversial political views rather than preventing the dissemination of child pornography.

Background

In August 2012, The Guardian^[1] published an op-ed accusing Twitter of "failing to police child pornography," noting that the company seemed to react comparatively swiftly when suspending British journalist Guy Adams for tweeting out an NBC executive's email address. In November 2016, Twitter users @0hour, @Eclipse_OW and @WonderChick launched automated scripts to track Twitter accounts posting illegal child pornography and the accounts that followed them. An estimated 25,000 accounts involved in the circulation of the images were subsequently discovered, leading many to call for their immediate suspension and authorities to investigate the matter.

Developments

Online Reaction

On November 20th, Twitter user GSDDogLover^[14] posted a screenshot listing the followers of child pornography accounts (shown below).

The following day, Twitter user @0hour was suspended for retweeting the illegal accounts. On November 21st, a thread about Twittergate was submitted to 4chan's /pol/ (politically incorrect) board.^[3]

That day, YouTuber notsafeforjerk uploaded a video about the controversy titled "Twittergate Report" (shown below, left). Also on November 21st, Twitter user reallygraceful uploaded a video commenting on the accounts (shown below, right).

Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists began speculating about connections between people involved in "Pizzagate" and the child pornography Twitter accounts (shown below).

Also on November 21st, @Eclipse_OW tweeted a screenshot of an email sent by Twitter informing him that he was suspended for tweets from his account "regarding accounts tweeting child sexual exploitation" (shown below).

Meanwhile, a post about the controversy titled "Twitter allows pedophile accounts posting child pornography but deletes conservative accounts" reached the front page of /r/The_Donald,^[2] where it gained over 5,800 votes (93% upvoted) and 440 comments in 24 hours. That day, other posts about Twittergate reached the frontpage of the /r/conspiracy,^[6] /r/KotakuInAction^[7] /r/OutOfTheLoop^[13] and /r/pizzagate^[8] subreddits.

News Media Coverage

In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the pedophile accounts, including Coed,^[5] Anonews^[9] The Daily Star,^[11] One Angry Gamer^[12] and North Crane.^[10]

Search Interest

External References