Twitter is accused of biases in who and how it suspends

Twitter inspired backlash from thousands of users following the network’s decision to suspend the account @Instapundit, which belongs to University of Texas professor of law Glenn Reynolds.

That suspension came after a tweet, sent Wednesday evening, that said “Run them down,” with a quoted tweet from @WBTVNews about the protest in Charlotte over the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott by police officer Brentley Vinson.

The decision inspired conversation around how Twitter defines and reacts to threats on its network. Twitter has long been scrutinized for its apparent inability to effectively address abuse.

For example, this summer actress Leslie Jones was the target of racist and vulgar tweets that motivated her to leave the service and prompted the permanent suspension of Milo Yiannopoulos. That hasn’t been the case consistently, inspiring confusion and frustration from Twitter users.

Some users defined the act against @Instapundit as censorship. The hashtag #freeinstapundit was mentioned 12,102 times from about 6:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET Thursday. The sentiment around the hashtag was 48 percent negative, 49 percent neutral and only 3 percent positive, according to social analytics company Spredfast.

It also inspired tweets regarding to Twitter’s general handling of abuse on the network from other users who allegedly receive abusive tweets that do not result in suspensions.

The event drew attention to a new Twitter competitor, Gab.ai, founded by Andrew Torba, which has committed itself to free speech. The site, which launched in August and is still in private beta, has 25,000 active user accounts and 65,000 people on the waitlist. That’s up from 12,000 users and 42,000 on the waitlist when BuzzFeed profiled it two weeks ago.

On Thursday, the site was receiving thousands of new sign ups.

Twitter does not comment on individual accounts, but its action toward @Instapundit, is in line with its policies.

Since early 2015, its rules have prohibited the use of violent threats, direct or indirect. “You may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism,” Twitter’s rules read.

Twitter then chooses to either temporarily suspend or permanently ban accounts that violate its terms. An account owner could unlock their account by “verifying your email address, adding a phone number to your account, or deleting Tweets that are in violation of our Rules,” according to Twitter’s Help Center.

Reynolds, who is also a contributing columnist for USA Today and runs his own blog, chose to delete the “offending tweet,” and his account was reinstated, according to a tweet from Instapundit.

Reynolds, who has 67,000 followers on Twitter, later defended his tweet. Driving on is self-preservation, especially when weve had mobs destroying property and injuring and killing people. But if Twitter doesnt like me, Im happy to stop providing them with free content,” he wrote on his blog.

Beyond Twitter’s actions, the Dean of the University of Tennessee College of Law Melanie D. Wilson is investigating the matter. Professor Reynolds has built a significant platform to discuss his viewpoints, but his remarks on Twitter are an irresponsible use of his platform,” Wilson said in a statement, according to ABC affiliate Wate.com.

Twitter, for its part, has been working to improve its handling of abuse on the site. In August, Twitter released a quality filter that limits tweets based on a variety of signals and a setting that limits tweet notification to people users choose to follow.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey addressed the issue publicly in July, telling investors, “No one deserves to be the target of abuse on Twitter. We haven’t been good enough at ensuring that’s the case, and we need to do better.”

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