Yesterday, Rose McGowan had her Twitter account suspended.
Usually this wouldn’t be major news, but as the actress had been tweeting loudly and often about Harvey Weinstein (against whom she alleges rape), it was covered across the full spectrum of media outlets.
Requests for comment from Twitter were met with the usual response that the platform “does not comment on individual accounts for privacy reasons.”
In this specific case, however, there was widespread outrage that Twitter – the second favourite platform of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Donald Trump (after 4chan) – was silencing McGowan for speaking loudly and frequently about sexual harassment, assault, and rape.
With that in mind, Twitter has, for once, offered an explanation, revealing that her account was suspended because she tweeted a private phone number.
We have been in touch with Ms. McGowan’s team. We want to explain that her account was temporarily locked because one of her Tweets included a private phone number, which violates our Terms of Service. 1/3
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 12, 2017
Twitter is proud to empower and support the voices on our platform, especially those that speak truth to power. We stand with the brave women and men who use Twitter to share their stories, and will work hard every day to improve our processes to protect those voices. 3/3
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 12, 2017
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey also said that they as a platform “need to be a lot more transparent in our actions in order to build trust”, which would be fine if Twitter literally hadn’t said it at least a dozen times before.
It also highlights massive inconsistencies in the platform, given it has a widespread abuse problem, verifies neo-Nazis, and allows the President of the United States to harass private citizens and threaten nuclear war. (Twitter has made it pretty clear that it won’t ever ban Trump.)
https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/918549157387710464
https://twitter.com/dianelyssa/status/918505448315158529
https://twitter.com/dianelyssa/status/918505983638425600
I’m not even the first person this guy has called a kike in the past 24 hours. thoughts on that? https://t.co/KfnF7K5osz
— hannah moskowitz updates (@hannahmosk) October 12, 2017
https://twitter.com/stopbeingfamous/status/918547370702450688
https://twitter.com/merrittk/status/918508894938419200
https://twitter.com/ugsadkid/status/918510683905511425
https://twitter.com/TheJamesBJones/status/918515996305932289
Just some fun tweets to remember next time Twitter’s other co-founder, Biz Stone, gets narky at people criticising the platform for allowing abuse.
