On Sept. 8, the anti-hate speech group Tokyo No Hate demonstrated in front of the Tokyo offices of Twitter. The group wants the social networking service to police its users more diligently with regard to racist and other discriminatory tweets.
Twitter forbids messages that denigrate individuals or groups because of race, ethnicity, place of origin, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability or gender, but Tokyo No Hate believes the Japanese arm of the company is not enforcing this policy. For its street protest, the group printed offensive tweets that had appeared on Twitter, which mainly targeted Japan residents of Korean or Chinese background, on pieces of paper and placed them on the sidewalk in front of Twitter's offices so that passersby could read them and judge for themselves.
The group's leader, Masayuki Ishino, recently told journalist Kayoko Ikeda on the web program Democracy Times that he got the idea from the satirist Shahak Shapira, who had a similar gripe against Twitter in Germany. Shapira felt the company did not sufficiently screen anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim and other racist remarks, so he made stencils of some of the offensive tweets and chalk-spray-painted them on the sidewalk outside of Twitter's offices in Hamburg.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.