‘White Dudes for Harris’ said their account was targeted by X for the second time
By Ramishah Maruf, CNN
New York (CNN) — “White Dudes for Harris” said its X account was labeled as spam just a week after it had been locked and then reinstated on the Elon Musk-owned platform.
Musk has publicly endorsed Harris’ opponent, Donald Trump. A leader of the political organizing group for Kamala Harris claims there is a double standard on Musk’s platform, despite the billionaire’s long-standing claim to be a “free-speech absolutist.”
“I’m over here getting white supremacist memes in my feed, and when I report them I’m told they ‘didn’t violate policy,’” lead organizer Ross Morales Rocketto posted on X Tuesday. “But the @dudes4harris account gets throttled because… maybe they’re afraid.”
X has been criticized for allowing hate speech and other extreme content to flourish since Musk bought the company in October 2022. In March, a judge threw out X’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which had been accused of violating the company’s terms of service when it studied, and then wrote about, hate speech on the platform following Musk’s takeover of Twitter .
X first locked the “White Dudes for Harris” account during a massive fundraiser with 190,000 participants and more than $4 million raised on July 29, according to a post by the organizers.
“Uh oh… we pissed off @elonmusk,” the account posted on July 29. It was subsequently reinstated the following day.
But on Tuesday, the account posted a screenshot that said X found the account to contain spam or to be engaging in other types of platform manipulation. The account was still posting on X on Tuesday.
“This comes after they suspended us last week and put our account in ‘read-only’ mode,” the account posted on X. “They are scared of the conversation we started across the country last week. We cannot let them shut us down. Keep fighting.”
CNN has reached out to X for comment, but the company rarely responds to press inquiries.
“White Dudes for Harris” is one of several coalition groups that have popped up in support of Kamala Harris. The campaign said groups like Black Women for Harris, Latinas for Harris and White Dudes for Harris raised more than $20 million.
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