Matt Walsh
Case #
5528

Twitter censors Matt Walsh tweet that included clip from What Is A Woman Documentary that Twitter claimed would be restricted:

In late May 2023, The Daily Wire announced that it would begin streaming all of its podcast shows directly on Twitter, calling it "the largest free speech platform in the world." Subsequently, Jeremy Boreing, Co-CEO of The Daily Wire, explained in a Twitter thread that the outlet decided to stream host Matt Walsh's documentary What Is A Woman free for 24 hours on Twitter to celebrate it's one-year anniversary. Boreing continued, stating that the company was informed by a Twitter employee after a required pre-screening that the platform "would no longer provide us any support and would actually limit the reach of the film and label it as 'hateful conduct' because of 'misgendering'" found in two clips in the movie.

According to Boreing, the media outlet reminded the Twitter representative that the platform had recently removed its so-called "misgendering" policy. Boreing reported that the Twitter representative responded that the platform had "only removed 'misgendering' from [its] policy because [it] didn't need to be that specific, but that [it] still consider[s] 'misgendering' abuse and harassment." After declining to edit the film to accommodate this alleged infraction, The Daily Wire was reportedly told by the Twitter staff that the platform would ensure that The Daily Wire's "own followers would not be able to see it in their feeds. This, [Twitter] said, is part of [its] 'speech not reach' policy." 

Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk responded to Boreing's tweet thread, saying that "[t]his was a mistake by many people at Twitter. It is definitely allowed. Whether or not you agree with using someone's preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws." It is unclear what Musk was referring to, however, and Boreing even noted that his team was "trying to reach [Musk's] team to determine what this means for those posts, whether or not our event tonight will be allowed to proceed unencumbered, and whether or not we will be allowed to purchase the live event page and reach block as originally agreed."

Boreing also noted in his response to Musk's tweet that two of Matt Walsh's tweets that included the two objectionable clips had been labeled as "hateful conduct" and restricted from being shared. In fact, as of the time of publication, this tweet that includes a clip of a father calling his biological daughter "her," has been given a label that reads "Visibility Limited. This Tweet may violate Twitter's rules against Hateful Conduct. Learn more." The "Learn more" part of the tweet links to the platform's "Enforcement Options" page. All of the buttons below the tweet have been disabled, including the Reply, Re-tweet/Quote-tweet, Like, Bookmark, and Share buttons. At the time of publication, Musk had not responded to Boreing's request for intervention on this issue.

MRC Free Speech America has reached out to Twitter for comment, but has not received a response as of the time of publication. However, the restrictions on the post were removed.

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