Response to The Australian over claims of racist Twitter ‘comments’

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This response was sent to The Australian on Thursday, May 25, 2023 in response to its claims that the ABC “wore racist comments on its Twitter pages”.

Reply from a spokesperson

Noting that your story has already been published.

There is no “Twitter page” where comments can be posted and moderated.

All posts on Twitter are individual user posts posted by the user. Twitter accounts do not “carry” messages from other users.

Twitter is not ABC’s own social media platform.

There are no “Twitter comments” that can be moderated. You can’t “disable comments” either.

Media cannot moderate posts from other Twitter users. The ability to reply to messages can be disabled, but the ABC, like most/all media organizations, does so rarely and under specific circumstances.

Including the Australian.

This was reported to Sophie Elsworth yesterday by a Twitter user:

Even if replies are disabled, posts can obviously be reposted by other users and others can post replies to this.

Due to the growing incidence of toxic messages on Twitter, the ABC has already significantly reduced its presence on the platform and is considering further action.

However, when it comes to comments, The Australian publishes thousands of comments on its platform, including many offensive comments, some potentially even what Noel Pearson described in The Australian as “borderline casual racist”.

These comments are likely moderated.

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