Twitter slapped a reduced visibility warning label on Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s State of the State speech video where he called out transgender ideology targeted at children.
In a March 14 tweet, Gov. DeSantis reiterated words from his State of the State speech along with a video of that part of the speech. “Children are not guinea pigs for science experiments, and we cannot allow people to make money off mutilating them,” he tweeted. In both the tweet and the speech he referred to the story of self-described “former trans kid” Chloe Cole who attended the speech. Twitter attached a warning label to the bottom of the video with a message that read: “Visibility Limited: this Tweet may violate Twitter’s rules against Hateful Conduct,” according to a screenshot from Chaya Raichik, creator of Libs of TikTok. Twitter had removed the label by the following day.
Children are not guinea pigs for science experiments, and we cannot allow people to make money off mutilating them.
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 14, 2023
Thank you, Chloe, for sharing your story – Florida is listening. pic.twitter.com/wJMo6REmlC
It’s unclear what specific content in DeSantis’s video violated Twitter’s rules. Twitter’s Hateful Conduct policy states, “You may not directly attack other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.” But the Florida governor’s tweet and comments did not attack but upheld the dignity of children who have been mistreated by the profiting medical industry.
DeSantis did not promote violence or harassment in the video either. “Chloe Cole is now a young adult,” DeSantis said. “But she was receiving puberty blockers at age 13, and she underwent a double mastectomy at age 16. She’s now an advocate against allowing these procedures for our children. Chloe, thank you for your bravery, and the people of Florida and the legislature should heed your advice and provide protections against these procedures.”
This is not the first time the Florida governor has faced the ire of Big Tech. Twitter censored the governor just last week when he live-streamed his response to critics of a recently proposed expansion of last year’s Parental Rights in Education Act. The new expansion would ban teaching on sexual orientation or gender identity, not only from kindergarten through third-grade classrooms but also pre-k through eighth-grade classrooms. Twitter placed a sensitive warning label on his “Exposing the Book Ban Hoax” live stream and users attempting to watch the video had to click past a sensitive content filter to view the stream.
Exposing the Book Ban Hoax https://t.co/s0E3IVq4kh
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 8, 2023
Gov. DeSantis’s office declined to comment on the incident, and Twitter did not respond to MRC Free Speech America’s request for comment at the time of publishing.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
