Twitter Purges Alt-Right Accounts

Twitter has reportedly suspended a number of accounts associated with the 'alt-right' movement. Known members of the white nationalist group that championed Donald Trump's run for the White House have been kicked off the social network on

This is the very same day Twitter rolled out anti-harassment tools to address online bullying.

The purge, according to USA Today, included Richard Spencer, 38-year-old president of the National Policy Institute, who once called for the removal of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Jews from the US.
In a video titled Knight of Long Knives (a reference to the 1934 mass murder of Nazi leaders by Adolf Hitler), Spencer calls Twitter's move "corporate Stalinism."

"I was using Twitter the same way I always use Twitter," he said, claiming that he and other banned users "were not even trolling."

"What this leads me to believe is that there was some kind of coordinated effort to just wipe out alt-right Twitter," he added.

Spencer's personal account (@RichardBSpencer) was pulled, alongside the National Policy Institute (@npiamerica) think tank and Washington Summit Publishers (@washsummit) publishing firm he runs.

Twitter did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment. However, it did tell USA Today that "Twitter Rules prohibit targeted abuse and harassment, and we will suspend accounts that violate this policy." USA Today also reported a handful of other blocked users, including Paul Town, Pax Dickinson, Ricky Vaughn, John Rivers, and New Order.

In January, Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos—who has also been linked to the alt-right—had been stripped of his account verification after reportedly telling another user that she "deserved to be harassed." Six months later, Twitter permanently banned Yiannopoulos for his role in the online harassment of actress and comedian Leslie Jones.

Google, Facebook Go After Fake News With New Ad Policies
A user on Tuesday, meanwhile, directed Twitter's attention to a promoted tweet from New Order—a website propagating Nazism in the 21st Century—publicising a news article about 'White America'.

"I can't believe anything still surprises me, but why the f**k am I seeing Nazi ads on this website?" Ariana Lenarsky tweeted. The New Order account has since been suspended.

The move comes just as the social network extended its 'mute' feature, allowing users to block keywords, phrases, and entire conversations from their notifications.

DDoS Attack Briefly Knocks Ello Offline

llo's sudden rise to fame makes it the perfect target for hackers, who launched an apparent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the new social network over the weekend.

According to reports, users were locked out of the site for about 45 minutes on Sunday as the Ello team worked to patch the problem.

A homepage message told visitors that "The site is currently unavailable while we conduct some necessary maintenance. Follow along for any updates on our status page."

But the status page told a different story, telling users "we are undergoing a potential denial of service attack."

Ello reopened by 4:50 p.m. Eastern after blocking the IP addresses responsible for the attack, according to The Next Web.

Ello did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment.

The startup network exploded last week, reportedly thanks in part to Facebook's "real name" push that forced several San Francisco-based drag queens to stop using their stage names in their profiles.

A "simple, beautiful, and ad-free" service, Ello does not have a "real name" policy; instead it preaches the idea that a social network "can be a tool for empowerment … not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate."

Currently in beta, the invitation-only service is welcoming new users in small groups while it continues to roll out new features, including better security options to combat concerns from the public.

But the swarm of new Ello users may get a surprise when the free service begins implementing new fees. With no money from advertising and about $435,000 in funding from Vermont-based FreshTracks Capital, it will likely turn to a fee-based system in the future to stay afloat.

Reports tip additional charges for extra features; managing two separate Ello accounts, for instance, could set a user back $2. It remains to be seen how folks will react to a pay-for-service network—quite contrary to popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.