Twitter ruled that an article published by The Federalist violated its rules regarding the coronavirus and consequently locked the outlet’s account.
The article, titled “How Medical ‘Chickenpox Parties’ Could Turn The Tide Of The Wuhan Virus,” was published Wednesday, and the outlet tweeted a link to the piece shortly thereafter. At first, Twitter users began noticing that there was a warning placed on the tweet explaining that “this link may be unsafe.”
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Dr. Douglas Perednia, the author of the piece, argued in it that a “controlled infection” may be the best way to defeat the pandemic. He noted that a controlled voluntary infection “involves allowing people at low risk for severe complications to deliberately contract COVID-19 in a socially and medically responsible way so they become immune to the disease.”
Even if you don’t agree with this Federalist take, this “warning” from Twitter is incredibly misleading. Not sure I have ever seen anything like this here before. pic.twitter.com/zNvBSNtSaC
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) March 25, 2020
Twitter later temporarily suspended The Federalist’s account because the tweet promoting Perednia’s story violated its rules regarding COVID-19, a platform spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. The tweet is no longer visible on the outlet’s timeline.
The platform’s guidelines specifically as it relates to the pandemic, which have been updated as recently as last Wednesday, forbid users from denying global recommendations on how to decrease one’s likelihood of exposure and promoting treatments which “are not immediately harmful but are known to be ineffective,” among other rules.
A Twitter spokesperson did not respond to additional questions on whether the spam warning on The Federalist’s tweet prior to its removal was related to the content of the article.
The Federalist did not respond to a request for comment.
