The Twitter account of Libs of TikTok has been “desperately” deleting homophobic and other tweets in an effort to not get suspended from the social media platform, according to a noted anti-fascism researcher.
LibsOfTikTok, which has been called “an openly bigoted and homophobic social media account that reposts so-called ‘liberal’ content … to produce maximum engagement via rage clicks,” was unmasked by The Washington Post Tuesday as belonging to a former real estate agent.
“Chaya Raichik, the woman behind LibsOfTikTok, has been quietly deleting dozens of tweets in which she labels LBGTQ people as mentally ill,” tweeted Chad Loder. The Intercept last year described Loder as an antifascist researcher while praising their “expert use of publicly available images to identify and track right-wing extremists.”
“These tweets are clear violations of Twitter’s ToS, and this type of content is what got LibsOfTikTok temporarily suspended,” Loder, a developer and former tech CEO adds.
Early Wednesday morning Loder, citing researchers, said that thousands of tweets have been deleted.
According to Loder, there are also thousands of homophobic replies to her since-deleted tweets:
Loder also offers this example:
The Deleted Tweet Archive claims to have recovered nearly 3000 deleted tweets from LibsOfTikTok, which it says are here.
On its Github page, the Deleted Tweet Archive says “all tweets quoted here are sourced from the Wayback Machine,” and links each tweet to that repository.
One of the deleted tweets reads: “This is a teacher promoting a book containing pornographic content. Groomer.” The book is the award-winning memoir, “Gender Queer,” by Maia Kobabe.
Not all the tweets listed as deleted are homophobic, transphobic, or generally anti-LGBTQ. One, ironically, berates another Twitter user for apparently posting the same TikTok video she had taken from TikTok, saying: “Please don’t steal my stuff.”