Donate
Text Audio
00:00 00:00
Font Size

Five strikes and you’re permanently banned.

So sayeth the Twitter monarchs, who discreetly promulgated a new policy to muzzle users who spread so-called COVID-19 “misinformation.” With no public announcement, the platform’s terms of service adopted new totalitarian language this month, including claims that certain speech about COVID-19 “may lead to harm” and that “persistent conspiracy theories” and “alarmist rhetoric unfounded in research” can threaten people and communities.

First-time violators of Twitter’s new COVID-19 policy will get one strike; second and third violations will each incur 12-hour account locks; fourth-time violators will get barred from their account for seven days; and, users who draw five or more strikes can expect to be permanently banned, per the new policy.

Though it remains to be seen how strictly Twitter will follow its own rules, the policy notes that the platform will mark the following content as violative: factual claims expressed in definitive terms, tweets that are “demonstrably false or misleading, based on widely available, authoritative sources”; AND language deemed likely to affect “public safety” or “cause serious harm.”

The policy states that users who believe their account was locked or suspended in error can appeal, though Twitter didn’t provide further information on its criteria for upholding an appeal and whether it will remove strikes for successful appellants.

Twitter did not respond to an MRC Free Speech America request for clarification at the time of publication.

Human Events Senior Editor Jack Posobiec cited the policy as a reason for conservatives to join social media app GETTR in a tweet.

Twitter’s new COVID-19 policy comes after an official federal government statement on Nov. 5 plainly stated that the duration of COVID-19 vaccinations’ effectiveness in preventing uptake, allaying symptoms, reducing the death risk, and restraining the spread of the virus is “not currently known.” That language was ironically embedded in a federal regulation forcing staff at Medicare- and Medicaid-certified providers and suppliers to be vaccinated.

The new policy comes after scads of actions that social media platforms have taken since March 2020 to quash any contagion of skepticism associated with the elites’ COVID-19 narrative.

Prior to issuance of the new policy, Twitter’s most recent prominent COVID-19 censorship action occurred earlier this month, when the platform slapped an “unsafe” label to an American Heart Association link to a study abstract. The study warned that COVID-19 vaccines “dramatically increase” the risk of heart inflammation.

YouTube more recently censored an interview between world famous podcaster Joe Rogan and Texas-based cardiologist Peter McCullough about the COVID-19 pandemic.

McCullough told Rogan there was a “suppression of early treatment” in order to “create acceptance for, and then promote, mass vaccination.”

Unsurprisingly vague in its explanation, YouTube said it removed the video for violating “Community Guidelines.”

Conservatives are under attack. Contact Twitter at (415) 222-9670 and demand Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing an equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.