Twitter imposes 12-hour timeout on Marjorie Taylor Greene over COVID-19 tweets
Twitter is giving Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene a 12-hour timeout, saying some of the Georgia Republican’s tweets violated the social media site’s policy on misinformation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Twitter suspended Greene’s account late Monday after President Biden urged tech companies to take stronger action against bogus claims about vaccines that are “killing people.” Twitter has defended its efforts to keep dangerous misinformation about COVID-19 off its site, saying it has removed thousands of tweets and challenged millions of accounts worldwide.
The controversial Greene appears to have been disciplined under the “strike” system Twitter launched in March, using a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify content about the coronavirus that is misleading enough to cause harm to people. Two or three strikes earn a 12-hour account lock; four strikes prompt a weeklong suspension, and five or more strikes can get someone permanently removed from Twitter.
“We took enforcement action on the account @mtgreenee for violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” the company said in an email.
The right-wing GOP firebrand says she is sorry for her comments comparing the required wearing of masks in the House to the horrors of the Holocaust.
One of Greene’s latest tweets that Twitter labeled as misleading claimed that the virus “is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65.” According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people under 65 account for nearly 250,000 of the U.S. deaths involving COVID-19.
U.S. coronavirus cases last week increased by 17,000 nationwide over a 14-day period for the first time since late fall, and an increase in death historically follows a spike in illness. Much of the worsening problem is being driven by the Delta variant first identified in India, which has since hit the United Kingdom and other countries, said U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.
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