David Lammy says Twitter too slow to remove racist ‘monkey boy’ tweets and threats

The shadow justice secretary said on Monday that it took more than 13 hours for the social media giant to act before it suspended the perpetrator’s account.

Lammy tweeted: ’13+ hours later, the police are investigating and Mikolaos Nichaloliakos’ tweet calling me a ‘monkey boy’ and making threats about ‘hanging’ are still live.

‘You (Twitter) need to get so much faster at removing hate.’

Scotland Yard said the tweet’s ‘contents are being assessed’ after an allegation of malicious communication towards the MP on Sunday.

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Home secretary Priti Patel previously said Twitter ‘must take decisive action against this sort of vile content much faster’ following the ‘awful racist abuse’.

The latest criticism of Twitter comes after social networks were condemned for failing to act quickly enough over a series of anti-Semitic messages sent by grime artist Wiley.

Downing Street was among those to criticise Twitter and Instagram for not acting sooner over Wiley’s message, saying last week their response had ‘not been good enough’.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: ‘Social media platforms must be quicker at taking action against hate.’

Twitter said: ‘Racist behaviour has no place on our service. We have policies in place that address abuse and harassment, violent threats, and hateful conduct.

‘If we identify accounts that violate any of these rules, we’ll take enforcement action. This account in question has been suspended for violating our hateful conduct policy.’