Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, had her personal Twitter account permanently disabled on Sunday after the firm said she had broken its Covid-19 disinformation policy.
Ms. Greene’s Twitter account was disabled after she mistakenly tweeted on Saturday about “very high quantities of Covid vaccination deaths.” She included a deceptive chart that drew data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, a decades-old system that depends on self-reported instances from patients and health care providers.
Ms. Greene has a fifth “strike” on Twitter, which means her account will not be reinstated. After she erroneously said that the immunizations were “failed,” the business handed her the fourth strike in August. Ms. Greene had received a third strike less than a month prior for tweeting that Covid-19 was not dangerous to people unless they were obese or over the age of 65 and that vaccines should not be necessary.
Because the tweets from Ms. Greene’s official congressional account, @RepMTG, did not violate the service’s regulations, it remained operational.
In a statement, Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokeswoman, stated, “We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for multiple violations of the policy.” The company permits accounts to file an appeal, and if the infringing post is shown to be true, the suspension may be lifted.
Ms. Greene claimed that Twitter “is an enemy of America and can’t handle the truth” on the alternative social messaging app Telegram.
Her suspension comes as the highly infectious Omicron form of the coronavirus has resurfaced in the United States. Officials revealed on Saturday that New York State had documented over 85,000 new coronavirus cases on the final day of 2021, the largest one-day number in the state since the pandemic began.
Twitter has long prohibited users from disseminating false information that may cause harm. After a crowd of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol last January 6, the firm has in rare circumstances permanently banned high-profile accounts, including former President Donald J. Trump’s account, due to a risk of “future incitement of violence.”
Currently, there is no evidence that coronavirus immunizations have resulted in widespread significant side effects. Many coronavirus myths have promoted the idea that side effects with Covid-19 vaccines have been underreported by using the VAERS database, which is governed by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
An F.D.A. spokeswoman told Reuters in October that the assertion that the database showed many people died as a result of the Covid-19 vaccinations was inaccurate and based on a misreading.
“Although under-reporting is a constraint in VAERS, in terms of Covid-19 vaccine safety monitoring, there is currently no data to suggest it would drastically underestimate the number of Covid-19 vaccine-related deaths,” the spokesman stated.
In March, Twitter announced a policy outlining the consequences of spreading false information about the virus and vaccines. People who break the guideline face escalating punishments known as strikes, and if they share false information about the virus on a regular basis, they may face a permanent ban.
Ms. Greene was elected to Georgia’s 14th Congressional District in August after gaining notoriety for her outspoken support for President Trump and QAnon, a movement based on the baseless conspiracy theory that a group of global liberal elites is running a child sex ring that Mr. Trump would put an end to.
Ms. Greene had previously referred to “Q” — the anonymous internet account that sparked the QAnon conspiracy theory — as a “patriot” who was “worth listening to” on Facebook and Twitter. Ms. Greene supported the false notion that Mr. Trump’s 2020 presidential election was stolen last year, tweeting in January that “MASS voting fraud on a scale that should alarm every American regardless of political party” had occurred.
Ms. Greene was suspended from Twitter after making misleading statements regarding the coronavirus, including rejecting vaccines and masks as methods to combat the epidemic. Ms. Greene contended in July that Covid-19 was not harmful to people unless they were fat or over 65 years old and that immunizations should not be necessary.
“The F.D.A. should not approve the covid vaccinations,” Ms. Greene tweeted in August. She claimed that there were too many cases of illness and dissemination of the coronavirus among vaccinated persons and that vaccines were “failed” and “do not reduce the virus’s spread, nor do masks.”
“Covid-19 vaccinations are effective against serious sickness and mortality,” according to current advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It suited Ms. Greene to portray her suspension as part of a pattern of moves by Twitter to censor conservatives, according to Imran Ahmed, the C.E.O. of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which published research on the dozen most prominent social media influencers spreading misinformation about vaccines.
Mr. Ahmed stated that Ms. Greene was suspended “for the basic reason that she is a superspreader of lies.”
He also chastised Twitter for not always suspending high-profile users who spread false information. Mr. Ahmed remarked, “While the suspension of Representative Greene’s account for spreading fatal disinformation appears to be a valid enforcement of stated rules, the piecemeal enforcement lends itself to being regarded as political.”
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