Greene has been outspoken against vaccines and masks during the pandemic.
Twitter locked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene ’s account for 12 hours, citing the fact that some of her tweets violated the social media site’s policy against spreading COVID-19 misinformation. The Republican lawmaker from Georgia was suspended on Monday evening.
Greene has been outspoken against vaccines and masks during the pandemic. On Sunday and Monday, she posted about how COVID-19 isn’t dangerous for people under the age of 65 or people who aren’t obese. She added that vaccines should not be required.
Twitter has been serious about attempting to keep COVID-19 misinformation off their site and claims it has removed thousands of tweets internationally.
Under Twitter’s “strike” system, which was launched in March, artificial intelligence scans for misleading coronavirus information. Two or three strikes lead to a 12-hour account lock, four strikes trigger a week’s suspension, and five or more strikes can result in being permanently banned from the site.
“We’ve observed the emergence of persistent conspiracy theories, alarmist rhetoric unfounded in research or credible reporting, and a wide range of unsubstantiated rumors, which left uncontextualized can prevent the public from making informed decisions regarding their health, and puts individuals, families and communities at risk,” the company said in its reasoning for creating the strike system.
In Georgia alone this week, COVID-19 infection rates have increased 193 percent in the past two weeks, The New York Times reported.
In a statement, Twitter explained its reasoning for Greene’s account lock.
“We took enforcement action on the account @mtgreenee for violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically the Covid-19 misleading information policy,” a Twitter spokesman said.
Last week, President Joe Biden criticized sites like “Facebook,” saying they were “killing people” by allowing misinformation about COVID-19 to continue to spread. In the past year, there have been numerous conspiracy theories circulating online, including ones that claim the vaccine is actually microchipping the population and others claiming that people are shedding the vaccine and making others sick.
There is no evidence to back up these claims.
