Twitter censors conservatives who dare challenge the leftist agenda, but leftist activists can attempt to intimidate federal officials and Twitter won’t bat an eyelash.
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ShutDownDC,” a group known for organizing harassment campaigns against prominent conservatives, asked “DC Service Industry Workers” to help locate the SCOTUS justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. “If you see Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett or Roberts DM us with the details!” the leftist organization tweeted. ShutDownDC even tried to sweeten the deal adding, “We'll venmo you $50 for a confirmed sighting and $200 if they're still there 30 mins after your message.” The tweet appears to be a glaring violation of Twitter Rules on “Abusive behavior” and its “Private information and media policy.” So far, Twitter has done nothing.
The Twitter Rules against abusive behavior prohibit harassment and “behavior that encourages others to harass or target specific individuals.” The platform elaborates that “this includes, but is not limited to; calls to target people with abuse or harassment online and behavior that urges offline action such as physical harassment.”
The platform’s “Private information and media policy” even more pointedly prohibits sharing personal information that could endanger another person. “Our primary aim is to protect individuals from potential physical harm as a result of their information being shared,” Twitter writes. “[W]e consider information such as physical location and phone numbers to be a higher risk than other types of information.”
The Twitter policy doesn’t stop there. Twitter claims it factors in “the intent of the person sharing the information.” So it appears that a tweet in of itself does not have to explicitly harass or doxx a person to violate the policy. “If we believe that someone is sharing information with an abusive intent, or to harass or encourage others to harass another person, we will take action.”
But Twitter has not taken action. It also did not respond to MRC Free Speech America’s request for comment asking whether the tweet violates its policy as it very explicitly appears to do.
This is not the first time ShutDownDC has gotten away with targeting specific individuals online. The extremist group organized an event on Facebook in Nov. 2021 to harass U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) purportedly near his home address. The Daily Signal reported that the group also published a map of 27 conservative organizations in and around DC just before the 2020 election. Neither Facebook nor Twitter removed the group from their platforms.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Twitter at 415-222-9670 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment and provide clarity on “hate speech” and an 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.
