Elon Musk fires THOUSANDS of Twitter staff members! (UPDATE: TWITTERPOCALYPSE! Journalists and leftist accounts banned without warning!))
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Elon Musk's X Is Suspending Accounts That Reveal a Neo-Nazi Cartoonist's Alleged Identity
Researchers and journalists have been blocked on X from sharing the alleged identity of the neo-Nazi cartoonist Stonetoss.
DAVID GILBERT
POLITICS
MAR 20, 2024 8:43 AM
Elon Musk's X Is Suspending Accounts That Reveal a Neo-Nazi Cartoonist's Alleged Identity
Researchers and journalists have been blocked on X from sharing the alleged identity of the neo-Nazi cartoonist Stonetoss.
ILLUSTRATION: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES
X has locked and suspended the accounts of journalists and researchers who shared the alleged identity of a neo-Nazi cartoonist known as Stonetoss after the cartoonist appealed to site owner Elon Musk.
The incident, critics say, highlights once again how Musk has not only welcomed extremists onto his platform but has repeatedly boosted their conspiracies, engaged with their accounts, and seems to have protected them from scrutiny.
A lengthy X thread posted by the antifascist research group Anonymous Comrades Collective last week claimed that Stonetoss is a man named Hans Kristian Graebener from Spring, Texas. Stonetoss cartoons, which feature simple and colorful imagery coupled with racist, homophobic, and antisemitic language, have become hugely popular among right-wing communities since they were first published at least seven years ago.
In its telling, the antifascist research group linked the Stonetoss cartoonist to another anonymous racist cartoonist known as Red Panels by comparing their voices from appearances on extremist podcasts. The researchers say they found an email address linked to Graebener that was used to register the Red Panels accounts on the far-right social media platform Gab. Then, the group says, it was able to match up comments made by Stonetoss with events in Graebener’s life. In one case, Graebener took a trip to Japan in 2019 with a Houston IT company he then worked for; at the same time, Stonetoss posted a picture on X of a “welcome to Japan” sign with the comment, “Finally made it to the ethnostate fellas.” The research group has been doing this kind of work for years and has been credited with unmasking numerous other extremists, including those involved with a neo-Nazi homeschool network.
Graebener has not disputed anything the researchers uncovered. He did not respond to requests for comment from WIRED to his personal email address nor to the email address on the Stonetoss website, and he did not pick up calls from phone numbers associated with his name.
The Anonymous Comrade Collective thread got a lot of attention on X, racking up at least 13.5 million views. On Thursday, the Stonetoss account appealed to X users who have “a direct line” to Musk, X’s owner, to help to get the thread deleted. Musk has, in the past, shared an altered version of a Stonetoss cartoon about the collapse of society. “If Elon's idea of a ‘free speech’ website is one where people can be intimidated into silence, the outcome will be a site where the Stasi will drive out all dissent,” Stonetoss wrote. The account also tagged Musk and offered to share a list of people to target.
In a subsequent post, Stonetoss said this appeal was not about him but about other “artists.”
“This is about others I know personally,” Stonetoss wrote. “There is a whole ecosystem of artists out there who cannot (or have stopped) making art because of people on twitter organized to punish them IRL for doing so.” The cartoonist also added that sales of his plush toy were “going gangbusters” since his alleged identity was revealed.
Hours later, the account associated with the Anonymous Comrades Collective that posted the thread was deleted, and the account was suspended. On Friday, dozens of users, including a number of researchers and journalists, began discussing the incident and posting some of the details of the research, including Graebener’s name.
X locked down many of these accounts and ordered them to delete the offending tweet to get full access to their accounts back. Among those targeted were Jared ****, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who covers right-wing extremism; Hannah Gais, a senior research analyst at Southern Poverty Law Center; and Steven Monacelli, an investigative journalist for the Texas Observer. (WIRED has also published Monacelli’s work.)
X also imposed a ban on sharing the link to the Anonymous Comrades Collective blog detailing its research. WIRED verified this on Monday morning by attempting to post the link, only to be met with a pop-up message that read: ‘We can't complete this request because this link has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially harmful.”
Even with the crackdown from X, people kept sharing details of the Stonetoss investigation.
“We all just started posting his name; it was like a Streisand effect,” Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, tells WIRED. “They're just trying to censor his name, and then everyone started getting their accounts locked.”
Caraballo, who shared screenshots of the messages she received from X with WIRED, managed to circumvent the initial ban by appealing it and claiming, ironically, that she was the victim of mass reporting from antifa who were attempting to silence her right-wing viewpoint.
While that appeal was successful, Caraballo was quickly locked out of her account again when she changed her username to “Hans Kristian Graebener is stonetoss.” That resulted in a 12-hour suspension, and when her account was reinstated she was soon punished for earlier posts that shared screenshots of information about Graebener. Caraballo’s account has now been suspended for seven days. Shortly after this article was originally published, Caraballo’s account was restored by X, without an explanation.
An X representative says that the company, following a review of the actions taken against the accounts of Anonymous Comrades Collective, ****, Gais, Monacelli, and Caraballo, stood by its decision.
“The posts that were removed were all actioned correctly,” says Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X, adding that the posts violated the company’s “posting private information policy” for “outing the identity of an anonymous user.”
While X does have a policy around sharing private information, a review of the company’s terms of service shows no mention of a policy related to outing the identity of an anonymous user, and Benarroch did not respond to a request for clarification.
“According to X’s terms of service, posting someone's name does not constitute doxing, but many accounts, including my own, have been made to delete posts that merely mention the name of the racist and antisemitic cartoonist Stonetoss,” Monacelli tells WIRED. “I've never seen enforcement like this before.”
This policy change could possibly be in response to a post last month from Musk when he wrote, “Any doxxing, which includes revealing real names, will result in account suspension.” Still, in an interview with Don Lemon released on Monday, Musk said that moderation of hate speech is akin to “censorship.”
There are now hundreds of posts on the platform that name Stonetoss as Graebener. There are also numerous accounts on the platform that changed their profile name to “Hans Kristian Graebener is stonetoss”—and they haven’t all been suspended, which suggests the account suspensions and locking were possibly targeted rather than part of the implementation of a new policy at the company formerly known as Twitter.
“This is completely arbitrary and under Twitter's own community standards it says that a name is never considered private information,” Caraballo tells WIRED. “There's an immense double standard here of the neo-Nazi comic guy being protected” by X. But then, she says, “The people that do this to anyone on the left are not only followed by [Musk] but are boosted by him. It's completely inconsistent.” To her, it seems that whoever Musk favors gets protected, and anyone else is banned. “This is also a pretext for them to be able to go after anyone that they dislike,” Caraballo says.”
Caraballo and others have pointed to accounts like Libs of TikTok and far-right troll Andy Ngo, both of which have shared private information about trans people but have not had their accounts suspended. Musk has also engaged with posts that doxed individuals on X, with seemingly no recourse for those accounts.
For anyone who has tracked Musk’s actions since taking control of X in October 2022, this incident is no surprise. Musk has systematically removed the guardrails the company had put in place to prevent hate speech on the platform and has welcomed back racists, antisemites, and transphobic posters who had been previously banned.
In recent months, Musk has repeatedly endorsed racist conspiracies like the great replacement theory and has engaged with numerous accounts spreading disinformation and hate speech. Just this weekend, Musk interacted with Martin Sellner, the founder of a white ethnonationalist group in Austria who previously communicated with and accepted a donation from the man who shot and killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.
After they deleted their posts, most of those restricted for sharing Graebener’s name have had their accounts unlocked. However, the Anonymous Comrade Collective account that shared the details about Graebener is also suspended, and a representative tells WIRED they are unsure when or if it will come back.
This article has been updated with mention of Alejandra Caraballo’s recently restored X account.
Joshua Holland (@JoshuaHolland@mastodon.social)
Nazi bar. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-x-blocked-journalists-researchers-neo-nazi-cartoonist/
mastodon.social
A Fellow of Infinite Vest (@osomatic.bsky.social)
Yup, Twitter shut me up too. Me, with my mighty reach of "I'm only on Bluesky any more, and anyway nobody reads my tweets." Me, who did not in fact violate the posted rules. For *some reason*, nobody is allowed to say the name of the Nazi-loving guy who draws Stone Toss.
bsky.app
Sign Up | LinkedIn
500 million+ members | Manage your professional identity. Build and engage with your professional network. Access knowledge, insights and opportunities.
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IIVI
Superstar
In addition to the Alt Right shyt, the app is a total mess now to be honest.
shytty replies with spammed video content, ads everywhere, bots and fake accounts everywhere, etc.
shytty replies with spammed video content, ads everywhere, bots and fake accounts everywhere, etc.
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BK The Great
Veteran
That app been done since last year. There's not much real news on there, just propaganda.
IIVI
Superstar
Elon Musk's X Is Suspending Accounts That Reveal a Neo-Nazi Cartoonist's Alleged Identity
Researchers and journalists have been blocked on X from sharing the alleged identity of the neo-Nazi cartoonist Stonetoss.www.wired.com
Elon Musk's X Is Suspending Accounts That Reveal a Neo-Nazi Cartoonist's Alleged Identity
Joshua Holland (@JoshuaHolland@mastodon.social)
Nazi bar. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-x-blocked-journalists-researchers-neo-nazi-cartoonist/A Fellow of Infinite Vest (@osomatic.bsky.social)
Yup, Twitter shut me up too. Me, with my mighty reach of "I'm only on Bluesky any more, and anyway nobody reads my tweets." Me, who did not in fact violate the posted rules. For *some reason*, nobody is allowed to say the name of the Nazi-loving guy who draws Stone Toss.
Sign Up | LinkedIn
500 million+ members | Manage your professional identity. Build and engage with your professional network. Access knowledge, insights and opportunities.
This is what I mean, dude has basically turned the app into a survivorship bias portal/echo chamber of Alt Right bullshyt accounts and posts like this:
Full of accounts who act dense. No shyt Kyle Rittenhouse got ran out of speaking at The University of Memphis. Anyone with 1/10 of a brain knew that was going to happen. Part of the real immature game they play.
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Remember how a huge part of his acquisition of Twitter revolved around claiming that he was going to get rid of the bots?
IIVI
Superstar
All the bugs and spam to scroll through all for a video to crash on something that looks somewhat interestingRemember how a huge part of his acquisition of Twitter revolved around claiming that he was going to get rid of the bots?
IIVI
Superstar
Dang, someone said basically the same thing I did earlier and it got trending.
I've largely stopped going on this app, every now and then though I'll check it or someone on another site mentions a tweet.
People definitely starting to dislike it though due to the major negatives and inconveniences.
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BaileyPark31
Love, Peace, Health, and Wealth
UWasntThere
Superstar
I'm sick of hearing about this autistic fakkit and the people that drag him though the mud while continuing to use it.
BK The Great
Veteran
Even watching simple stuff gets hard, that app now give me headaches when trying to search for news even though I’m still using it. But I see what it’s being used for now. Dumbasses actually payed for that blue check, I’m sure it still trash with all those payed features.
IIVI
Superstar
I remember when someone said Meek Mill is the "ultimate cooler" when it came to hype things, but I think that's clearly Elon.
Losing 30 million Americans on a SOCIAL MEDIA app is wild and that number is only growing
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Data-Hawk
I have no strings on me.
Exactly. Just stop using the app. I deleted it when I only follow tech news and got a bunch of other crap I didn’t want .
Space Cowboy
Christ is King
Has Elon Musk fired himself from this planet and committed that from a drug overdose yet?
ONLY thot bots follow me.Remember how a huge part of his acquisition of Twitter revolved around claiming that he was going to get rid of the bots?
I get a new one everyday…and they even like and retweet my posts!