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Journalism of Courage
Twitter has permanently banned and deleted the personal account of Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene for her tweets that violated the social media platform’s misinformation policy on Covid-19. On Saturday, Greene tweeted about “extremely high amounts” of deaths related to the COVID-19 vaccines.
After the removal of her personal account, Greene posted on Telegram and referred to Twitter as an enemy of America, which can’t handle the truth.
Under Twitter’s Covid-19 misleading information policy, “Content that is demonstrably false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of harm (such as increased exposure to the virus, or adverse effects on public health systems) may not be shared on Twitter.”
For content to be considered violative under this policy, the content should either advance a claim of fact, expressed in definitive terms, be demonstrably false or misleading, based on widely available, authoritative sources and be likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm.
The consequences of violating these policies are based on a strike system that works on a range of 1-5. A permanent suspension is carried out if the account holder has been given five or more strikes.
Who is Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Greene co-owns a commercial construction and renovation company with her husband in Georgia. In November 2020, she won a US House seat from Georgia’s 14th congressional district, where she ran unopposed after her Democratic opponent Kevin Van Ausdal dropped out of the race in September 2020.
Previously, Greene has been widely criticised for some troubling social media posts and statements that surfaced during the US presidential elections. She publicly endorsed the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory and has even repeatedly expressed racist views in public.
Despite this, she was a favourite of former President Donald Trump who praised her and once even called her a “future republican star. Trump himself has repeatedly refused to denounce the since-debunked QAnon theory, which suggests that the former President is secretly fighting a highly-placed child sex-trafficking ring.
But after she was criticised by several Republican leaders for elevating the warped theory during her primary race against fellow Republican candidate and neurosurgeon John Cowan, Greene distanced herself from QAnon conspiracy, without explicitly denouncing it.
In January 2021, Greene took down dozens of Facebook posts dating back to 2018 and 2019, where she publicly endorsed a number of fringe conspiracy theories and showed her support for executing Democrats, according to CNN.
