During the heated protests in Charlotte, North Carolina last night, well known conservative blogger and USA Today columnist Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds tweeted a violent response, "Run Them Down" as the protest was happening.
Twitter took action and suspended his account.
Reynolds responded to it here.
...I wouldn’t actually aim for people blocking the road, but I wouldn’t stop because I’d fear for my safety, as I think any reasonable person would.
“Run them down” perhaps didn’t capture this fully, but it’s Twitter, where character limits stand in the way of nuance...read on
He was later reinstated if he deleted the offensive tweet and he did.
Twitter has unblocked my account on condition of deleting the offending tweet. I've done so, but it's here:: https://t.co/DDkZd2el6Y
— Instapundit.com (@instapundit) September 22, 2016
Glenn basically got a slap on the wrist for wishing violence on people. OK, I've seen a lot of ugly things on Twitter so you can decide if he was warranted a suspension. I think it does rise to that level.
On the other hand, we have award-winning progressive blogger in journalism, Heather "Digby"Parton at Hullabaloo being tagged by Twitter as being unsafe.
I know twitter has an "unsafe" warning on my site. The site is safe. I reported it and crickets. It's destroyed my traffic but I'm stumped.
— digby (@digby56) September 22, 2016
What the hell? She's never written an offensive post in her life. I was able to snag a screen grab of the warning. Who knew she wasn't actually a person at all, but malware?
Doesn't Twitter even bother to survey a website before they deem them trying to steal your personal information or installing malicious software on your computer?
People are tweeting at @twitter to remove this ridiculous message and unblock her account.
It appears that there is a group of people targeting progressive voices. The same thing happened to PoliticusUSA last week, I'm told.
Right now the warning appears intermittently, but it's still hurting her traffic and her reputation every time it comes up.
Really, WTF is going on?
Update: According to people on Twitter, the warning comes and goes depending on the post. Her post on Gary Johnson, for example, garners a warning, but her Joss Whedon post does not. I'm shocked that libertarians would object to the free market of ideas enough to report her for daring to write about the Libertarian candidate. - Karoli
Update 2:
The Rude Pundit has the same issue.
