Twitter User Under Fire for Outing Virginia Protesters

Twitter User Under Fire for Outing Virginia Protesters

A Twitter account called @YesYoureRacist sparked controversy after exhorting its 300,000 followers to identify white nationalist and supremacist protesters from last weekend’s march and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to Bloomberg.

So far, at least two people who attended the protest have been revealed and one lost his job, according to the Twitter feed. Critics on the right and left said it was too easy to identify a photo incorrectly and ruin someone’s reputation. Far-right groups accused the anonymous person behind the account of “doxxing,“ a term that means unearthing and publishing private information on the internet, which this technically isn’t.

According to the Twitter account’s Patreon site, a platform that allows users to send money to artists and creators over the Internet, the person behind @YesYoureRacist has been active since 2012. “I’ve been scouring the underbelly of Twitter to expose people who say they’re not racist, and then go on to prove otherwise,“ the site says. Followers have been exploding in number since the events in Charlottesville, and are paying a monthly fee on Patreon to fund the activities.

The account published a Tweet on Aug. 12 that read: “If you recognize any of the Nazis marching in #Charlottesville, send me their names/profiles and I’ll make them famous #GoodNightAltRight.“ Twitter’s policy is that users may not incite the targeted abuse of others, promote violence, or publish other people’s private and confidential information, like street address or Social Security numbers.

The site misidentified Joey Salads, a YouTube star, as an attendee at the event. He wasn’t at the rally. The @YesYoureRacist account apologized for the mistake in a tweet. Multiple Twitter accounts also misidentified a protester as Kyle Quinn, a professor at the University of Arkansas. Quinn tweeted that he wasn’t the person pictured in the photo and the university confirmed that Quinn didn’t attend the rally.

Cole White, who worked for the Top Dog fast-food restaurant in Berkeley, California, no longer works there after being identified by @YesYoureRacist as part of the demonstrations. The restaurant said it discussed Cole’s participation in the protest and he “chose to voluntarily resign his employment with top dog,“ according to a statement provided to the news website Berkeleyside.

College student Peter Cvjetanovic, 20, was also identified by the Twitter account. He told a local news station in Reno, Nevada, that he traveled to Charlottesville to march in the “Unite the Right“ rally to oppose the removal of a statue of Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee. Cvjetanovic said in the interview that he “did not expect the photo to be shared as much as it was“ and that he hopes “people sharing the photo are willing to listen that I’m not the angry racist they see in that photo.“