Be Sweet When You Tweet

About

Be Sweet When You Tweet refers to a tweet sent from the official Twitter account representing Twitter which features an ASCII Art image of a person holding a sign that reads "Be Sweet When You Tweet." The tweet immediately sparked a wave of backlash in responses where people copied the form of the tweet while chiding Twitter for its perceived bias towards groups like white nationalists, harassers, anti-semites and TERFs and bias against those affected by harassment such as women POC and trans people.

Origin

On October 17th, 2018, the official Twitter^[1] account of Twitter tweeted an ASCII Art image of a person holding a sign that read "Be sweet when you tweet." The tweet gained over 48,000 retweets and 148,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

Immediately after the tweet was posted, it was mocked online by those who pointed out Twitter's notoriously controversial enforcement of its terms of service which to critics appears to allow for forms of hate speech on the platform. For example, Twitter user @everywhereist posted a parody where the sign read "you give blue checkmarks to nazis," gaining over 300 retweets and 3,800 likes (shown below, left). User @EKSwitaj posted a parody with the sign reading "You locked my disabled cat's account but won't ban Nazis" (shown below, right).

Additionally, the tweet coincided with a controversial decision by Twitter to allow for a tweet by American religious leader Louis Farrakhan comparing Jews to termites to remain on the site.

According to user @Bernstein, Twitter allowed the video/tweet to remain on the site, as it was "not in violation of the company's policies." This was paired against the "Be Sweet When You Tweet" tweet as an illustration of Twitter's hypocrisy (examples shown below). The responses to Twitter's "Be Sweet When You Tweet" tweet was covered by Daily Dot.^[2]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References