Annals of Social Media Censorship: Part 2

Twitter notice of second lockdown of my account in a single day

טוויטר ופייסבוק בשירות הצנזורה הצבאית הישראלית

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Here’s the latest update on the social media censors, who’ve been very busy today following the trail of breadcrumbs offered them by the Israeli military censor.  I woke up this morning to find out that I was banned from both my Twitter and Facebook accounts.  Because I reposted to my Facebook account the same Gaza IDF commando image which you see here (right), I was punished with a 24 hour suspension.  During this time, I cannot post anything to my account, though it is accessible to other users.  Though there is a means of appealing when Facebook disables your account.  There does not appear to be a way to appeal when they suspend your account.  I wrote a protest to the Facebook press office, but it’s had no impact.

Reposting of Facebook content earned me 24 hour suspension

Twitter notified me as well this morning that my account was locked for posting the tweet I display here.  Rather than censor myself and delete the tweet, which would enable me to regain access to my account, I filed an appeal of the decision. The account remained locked down.  I also protested to the Twitter press team.  A few hours later, my account was unlocked and I regained access.  No word from anyone about why.

But three hours ago, I received another notice that my account had been locked (the second time in a single day).  The “offending” tweet (left) contained the same content as the tweet which originally caused my account to be locked. I again refused to self-censor and appealed.  But I notice that unlike last time, Twitter itself removed the tweet and it is no longer accessible on my account.

I have no idea what’s going on and why such erratic decisions were made regarding my case.  If you are brave and willing to risk disciplinary measures, I urge you to RT or repost this content on both Facebook and Twitter.  They can’t censor us all.

My free speech alternate Twitter account is @richards105.  You may post either to this account or my locked account (it’s not locked to you), @richards1052.  You may also post to my Facebook account.  As I cannot post to either of these two accounts, I ask you to post this to your own social media accounts so the damage of censoring me is mitigated.