Twitter removes tweets on Trans Day of Vengeance, says protest not peaceful
Twitter says it has removed thousands of tweets showing a poster promoting a "trans day of vengeance" protest in support of transgender rights in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.
Ella Irwin, Twitter's head of Trust and Safety, said in a tweet Wednesday that the company automatically removed more than 5,000 tweets and retweets of a poster promoting the event.
"We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them. 'Vengeance' does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok," Irwin wrote in the tweet.
In removing the tweets, Twitter said it used automated processes to do it quickly at a large scale, without considering what context the tweets were shard in. Because of this, both tweets that were critical of and those that supported the protests were removed.
This appeared to anger many conservative Twitter users who said the rules were unfairly applied to them because they were posting the image of the protest flyer to speak out