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Twitter suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene for 7 days over vaccine misinformation.

Aug. 10, 2021, 10:04 a.m. ET 53 minutes ago
By Davey Alba
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/technology/twitter-suspends-marjorie-taylor-greene.html

Twitter on Tuesday suspended Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, from its service for seven days after she posted that the Food and Drug Administration should not approve the coronavirus vaccines and that the vaccines were “failing.”

The company said that this was Ms. Greene’s fourth “strike,” which means that under the company’s rules she could be permanently barred if she violated Twitter’s coronavirus misinformation policy again. The company issued Ms. Greene’s third strike less than a month ago.

On Monday evening, Ms. Greene said on Twitter, “The FDA should not approve the covid vaccines.” She said there were too many reports of infection and spread of the coronavirus among vaccinated people, and added that the vaccines were “failing” and “do not reduce the spread of the virus & neither do masks.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s current guidance states, “Covid-19 vaccines are effective at protecting you from getting sick.”

In late July, the agency also revised its indoor mask policy, advising that people wear a mask in public indoor spaces in parts of the country where the virus is surging to maximize protection from the Delta variant and prevent possibly spreading the coronavirus. A recent report by two Duke University researchers who reviewed data from March to June in 100 school districts and 14 charter schools in North Carolina concluded that wearing masks was an effective measure against preventing the transmission of the virus, even without six feet of physical distancing.

Ms. Greene’s tweet was “labeled in line with our Covid-19 misleading information policy,” Trenton Kennedy, a Twitter spokesman, said in an emailed statement. “The account will be in read-only mode for a week due to repeated violations of the Twitter Rules.”

A representative for Ms. Greene did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Twitter has picked up enforcement against accounts posting coronavirus misinformation as cases have risen across the United States because of the highly contagious Delta variant. In Ms. Greene’s home state, new cases have increased by 171 percent in the past two weeks, while 39 percent of the state’s population has been fully vaccinated against the virus.


Davey Alba is a technology reporter covering disinformation. In 2019, she won a Livingston Award for excellence in international reporting and a Mirror Award for best story on journalism in peril. @daveyalba

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/technology/twitter-suspends-marjorie-taylor-greene.html