A parody account that gained thousands of followers by poking fun at MSNBC has been suspended by Twitter, although its creator says he “never violated any rules.”
Hunter Penn, 26, created the MSDNC account in April 2019 and grew it to almost 30,000 followers before it was suspended on Monday, along with several other parody accounts satirizing liberal media.
My project @MSDNCNews GOT SUSPENDED! ?
We were clearly marked as parody and never violated any rules.
PLEASE RT THIS and Contact Twitter support: @TwitterSupport
— Hunter Penn (@hunter_penn_h) January 27, 2020
“The point of it really was just to provide a different viewpoint to the corporate media and point out their hypocrisy using satire,” Penn told the Washington Examiner.
Penn said he took appropriate steps to meet Twitter’s terms of service by creating a mock MSNBC logo using photo-editing software and declaring that the account was a parody in its Twitter biography.
“According to the Twitter rules, parody accounts are allowed as long as they are clearly marked as a parody,” Penn said. “It was very clearly marked as a parody. It was right in the header. Even the name itself: MSDNC.”
“Anyone who follows anything political, they’d figure out pretty quickly this is obviously poking fun at MSNBC and their connections to the DNC,” he continued. “The [MSDNC] description said, ‘The place for surface level analysis, biased political commentary and ill-informed perspectives.’ So there was no question that it was a joke.”
A search of Penn’s account in a digital archive revealed that, as recently as Jan. 3, the MSDNC account included the phrase “parody account” in its biography. On Jan. 25, President Trump referred to MSNBC as “fake news MSDNC,” but there does not appear to be a connection to his tweet and the account’s suspension.
Penn has appealed the ruling but said that he was given “no reason whatsoever” as to why the account was suspended. He added that he’s “not counting” on getting the account reinstated but remains hopeful.
“It seems like anyone who challenges the status quo enough and gets enough complaints from who knows who, they seem to get suspended,” he said. “If you’re not toeing the line, so to speak, you’re ostracized and can get suspended. It can happen to anyone.”
The Babylon Bee and the Onion, two of the most widely read satirical accounts on the internet, were still active on Twitter as of Monday afternoon. Penn joins a growing list of accounts that span political ideology and have found themselves on the wrong side of Twitter’s rules.
Far-right blogger Laura Loomer chained herself to Twitter headquarters after the platform banned her for a tweet that said Rep. Ilhan Omar was “anti-Jewish.” In 2018, Twitter banned dozens of left-wing accounts ahead of the midterm elections for having associations with the Occupy movement. Last year, the platform shuttered parody accounts poking fun at New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
