Publishing platform Medium suspends far-right figures

The online publishing platform Medium has suspended the accounts of prominent far-right figures Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec and Laura Loomer.

Medium spokesperson Sandee Roston told The Hill that the company does “not comment on individual accounts.”

Roston did point to a Feb. 7 post detailing an update to its rules.

{mosads}“We have all seen an increase and evolution of online hate, abuse, harassment, and disinformation, along with ever-evolving campaigns of fraud and spam,” Medium’s rules update reads. “We have strengthened our policies around this type of behavior.”

“We do not allow calls for intolerance, exclusion, or segregation based on protected characteristics, nor do we allow the glorification of groups which do any of the above,” the new rules specify.

The platform’s new rules include banning misinformation campaigns and lets the company consider “off-platform action,” in its decision to ban users.

In its previous set of rules, the company had billed itself as a “free and open platform for anyone to write their views and opinions,” and said it believes “free expression deserves a lot of leeway, so we generally think the best response to bad ideas is good ideas, not censorship.”

This language has been scrubbed from the current version of its platform rules.

The account of white supremacist leader Richard Spencer has not yet been deleted. Unlike Cernovich, Posobiec and Loomer, however, Spencer has not posted on Medium.

Loomer is also currently suspended from posting on Twitter for seven days over Tweets regarding the shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.

She is also banned from Uber and Lyft after tweeting that “someone needed to create a non Islamic form of @uber or @lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver.”