Republican lawmaker, Marjorie Taylor Greene has been suspended by Twitter for posting “misleading” information about Coronavirus.
Greene was suspended for 12 hours after she posted messages that violated Twitter’s policy against sharing misleading information about the Coronavirus.
In two tweets on Monday July 19, she argued that vaccines should not be required, and that COVID-19 was not dangerous for people aged under 65 who are not obese. Both posts are still on display, but have been tagged by Twitter as “misleading”.
A Twitter spokesperson said;
“We took enforcement action on the account @mtgreenee for violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically the Covid-19 misleading information policy.”
The congresswoman has been an outspoken opponent of vaccines and masks as tools to curb the pandemic.
Greene’s tweet comes at a time when COVID-19 cases are once again on the rise across the U.S. as the more infectious Delta variant of the virus takes hold and the uptake of vaccines begins to stall.
Georgia, the congresswoman’s home state, is now reporting an average 1,000 new COVID-19 cases a day compared to an average of around 340 cases a day exactly one month ago.
Reacting to her suspension, Ms Greene said Silicon Valley firms were attacking free speech with support from the White House.
The statement made available to New York Times read;
“These Big Tech companies are doing the bidding of the Biden regime to restrict our voices and prevent the spread of any message that isn’t state-approved.”
Twitter took action after President Biden called on social media companies to do more to combat the spread of vaccine misinformation on their platforms.
On Friday July 16, Mr. Biden said sites like Facebook were “killing people” by allowing misinformation to flourish unchallenged, adding, “Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and that — and they’re killing people.”
