A senior journalist for Tablet magazine, Yair Rosenberg, says Twitter Inc. took the side of neo-Nazis after a bot he had helped create to expose bigoted trolls was banned by the platform.

Rosenberg described the events leading up to the banning in the New York Times on Wednesday, explaining that the bot he created with Neal Chandra, a San Francisco web developer, uncovered what he called “impersonator trolls.” The bot was named “Imposter Buster.”

These trolls would create fake accounts using photographs found online of minorities dressed in their traditional garb, such as a woman dressed in a hijab. They would also write disingenuous progressive bios, and then take to Twitter to get involved in sensitive issues while defending whatever minority they were pretending to represent.

He told The Times such deception was simple, but he felt Twitter wasn’t doing enough to combat it. “Most casual users aren’t likely to reverse image-search a troll’s avatar to see if it was stolen from someone else or peruse the account’s other tweets and realize that it only shares racist material,” he said.

That’s where his bot came in, which would unmask fake accounts. “Using a crowdsourced database of impersonator accounts, carefully curated by us to avoid any false positives, the bot patrolled Twitter and interjected whenever impostors tried to insinuate themselves into a discussion,” he said.

It worked, too, he told The Times, much to the chagrin of those it was exposing. He then said Twitter “sided with the Nazis” after first suspending the bot in April and then recently banning it. Rosenberg was informed by Twitter that the banning had come as a result of “high volumes of untargeted, unsolicited, or duplicative content or engagements” coming from the Imposter Buster account.

He agreed that a large number of complaints had been made by people, but those people were the very neo-Nazis he was trying to protect people from. His reaction was that the trolls are now free to use disguises and promulgate disingenuous opinions on the platform.

“The great irony of this whole affair is that Impostor Buster was doing Twitter’s job for it,” he said, adding, “The company’s justifications were both entirely accurate and utterly absurd.”

Mashable reached out to Twitter and got this response:

“Twitter welcomes the use of our service to counter hate speech and promote positivity, unity, and understanding. We believe this type of counterspeech is a healthy use of Twitter, and a necessary part of a vibrant democracy. Everyone on Twitter must follow the Twitter Rules, including our rules that prohibit hateful conduct, as well the rules that prohibit spammy behavior and automated mentions of other people. We are regularly in touch with developers to help ensure their work fully follows the Twitter Rules and our developer policies.”

Image: Esther Vargas via Flickr