Twitter has removed thousands of tweets about a “Trans Day of Vengeance” protest set for Saturday outside the US Supreme Court, drawing outrage from conservatives who have also been sharing the event poster to condemn the demonstration.
Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, said in a tweet Wednesday that the company automatically removed upwards of 5,000 tweets and retweets of a poster promoting the event.
“We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them. ‘Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok,” Irwin wrote.
The crackdown came just days after Audrey Hale, who police said identified as transgender, carried out a mass shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, killing three 9-year-old students and three adults before she was shot dead by cops.
In scrubbing the tweets, Twitter said it used automated processes to do it quickly and on a large scale, without considering the context in which the tweets were shared.
Many right-wing users lashed out at the platform for using this broad-brush approach and unfairly applying the rules to them, arguing that they were merely retweeting the flyer to denounce the upcoming demonstration.
Meanwhile, trans activists were quick to point out that “Trans Day of Vengeance” is a meme that has been around for years and is not a call to violence.
Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit left-wing advocacy group Fight for the Future, said Twitter’s actions are “the latest example of Big Tech companies employing double standards in content moderation.”
“They are slow to moderate content targeting trans people, but quick to silence us when we speak out or push back,” she said.
Greer also pointed out that “Trans Day of Vengeance” is a meme that has long been used by the trans community to express “anger and frustration about oppression and violence” its members face every day.
“Context is everything in content moderation, which is why content policies should be based in human rights and applied evenly, not changed rapidly based on public pressure or news cycles,” she added.
Many of the tweets that Twitter deleted were from conservative users suggesting that there was a possible connection between the planned rallies in Washington, DC, and the Nashville shooting
But Trans Radical Activist Network (TRAN), the group hosting Saturday’s protest outside the US Supreme Court, said it does not condone violence. In a statement, organizers said the event was planned before the school shooting.
“Vengeance means fighting back with vehemence,” the protest’s organizers wrote on their website. “We are fighting against false narratives, criminalization, and eradication of our existence.”
Earlier this month, Twitter rolled out a new policy prohibiting “violent speech,” including “coded language,” or so-called “dog whistles” used to indirectly incite violence.
With Post wires
