Israeli-German artist paints anti-Semitic tweets outside Twitter offices

An Israeli-German artist known for his “YOLOCAUST” project combining selfies taken at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial with images of concentration camp victims releases video of his latest work taking aim at social media giant Twitter’s failure to address online anti-Semitism and racism.

In the video, Shahak Shapira says that despite alerting Twitter to some 300 tweets containing offensive content, the social media company failed to delete most of the messages and in nine of the cases said that the tweets were not in violation of the company’s policies.

Shapira contrasts Twitter’s approach to these messages with that of Facebook, who he says removed some 80 percent of the 150 posts he reported to the company within days.

Due to Twitter’s inaction over the offensive tweets, Shapira decided that “if Twitter forces me to see those things, then they’ll have to see them too,” leading him to travel to the company’s Hamburg offices and spray-paint 30 of the tweets outside the entrance using chalk.

Among the tweets that Shapira painted on the ground were messages such as “JEWISH PIG,” “LET’S GAS SOME JEWS TOGETHER,” “GAYS TO AUSCHWITZ,” and “GERMANY NEEDS A FINAL SOLUTION FOR ISLAM,” next to which he wrote “HEY TWITTER: DELETE THIS CRAP.”