Culture
Marjorie Taylor Greene is one Twitter violation away from a permanent ban
You can do it, Marj, we believe in you.
Twitter has suspended Republican House Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for a week after she tweeted the lie that COVID-19 vaccinations were somehow “failing.” This marks her fourth violation of the social media app’s policies on “misinformation,” with a Twitter spokesperson explaining that the temporary restriction puts her account in a “read-only mode for a week due to repeated violations of the Twitter Rule.” If Rep. Greene disregards content guidelines one more time, she could face a permanent ban from using the app. Finger crossed.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the latest MAGA boils to form on the American body politic, and has primarily made a name for herself by ostensibly wresting the tiki torch from Trump’s tiny, soft hands and waving it around the steps of the U.S. Capitol building while screaming trash about COVID-19, election fraud, and (for good measure) transphobic nonsense.
She is fully aware by now what does and doesn’t violate Twitter’s content rules, and knows what will happen for tweeting reckless, racist garbage like, “So if your daughter gets raped by a drunk illegal that just sold heroine & stole her car, ICE is not allowed to deport him.”
Greene’s likely banking on a permanent Twitter ban to further solidify her self-proclaimed “censored truth-teller” image with the QAnon and MAGA base, and you know what? We’d like to encourage her to go for it. Twitter’s much more pleasant since Trump was excommunicated, and we fully expect a similar brightening once MJT is shown the door.
Far too many ways to spread dangerous lies — Unfortunately, nabbing her sadly coveted Twitter ban won’t do much to limit Greene’s online reach in the grand scheme of things, especially when anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists can game the system using services like Linktree.
And while Twitter has finally gotten around to preventative measures like enlisting Reuters and the AP to help police the site’s misinformation issues, it’s a decision that is far too late to fix some of the damage already done to the social media platform’s users. Until the root causes of why people like Rep. Greene can get elected are addressed, we’re going to keep having these problems. But the more private companies decide to develop spines and de-platform hatemongers like Greene, the more likely that future return to sense, decency, and intelligent debate is.
