Twitter Explains Why It Blocked Rose McGowan After Weinstein Posts
Rose McGowan has been blocked by Twitter after using her account to call out Ben Affleck, in her ongoing crusade against Harvey Weinstein's alleged abuses. Twitter has declined to comment on the account suspension at first, before coming forward with an explanation.
McGowan was in the middle of a row with Ben Affleck, who himself has put out a statement slamming Weinstein for reportedly preying on women in Hollywood. Twitter was of little help in diffusing the situation when the social media platform opted to suspend McGowan's account.
The actress then took to Instagram to post an image of Twitter's message, which said that they have "temporarily limited some of your account features," which meant that she was barred from posting tweets, doing retweets, or liking posts.
For their part, Twitter initially offered no explanation, according to the Washington Post, until almost a day after. Since then, the post that has supposedly triggered the suspension has been deleted, and McGowan's account restored.
Later, Twitter would explain why McGowan's account was suspended. In a series of Tweets by their official Twitter Safety handle, the service explained that she has reportedly posted a private phone number, in possible violation of Twitter's Terms of Service.
"We want to explain that her account was temporarily locked because one of her Tweets included a private phone number," the post explained.
"The Tweet was removed and her account has been unlocked. We will be clearer about these policies and decisions in the future," Twitter added in a follow-up post, before adding how they "stand with the brave women and men who use Twitter to share their stories."
McGowan took to Instagram during the time her Twitter account was suspended. Her Twitter handle has since been unlocked.
A post shared by Rose McGowan (@rosemcgowan) on Oct 11, 2017 at 9:19pm PDT