Twitter has banned the popular parody account @AOCPress despite it complying entirely with the service's rules on satire by self-labelling as such.
This account – a satire of Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – had over 85,000 followers at the time of the ban and is now permanently suspended.
In an email sent to the account owner, Twitter claimed the reasoning: "you may not register or create fake and misleading accounts."
The tech giant then followed that statement by saying "you may use Twitter pseudonymously or as a parody."
Twitter rules require all parody, newsfeed, commentary, and fan accounts to indicate "non-affiliation" in both the account name and bio. The AOC Press Release parody account used the word "parody" in both its account name and biography.
The social network appears to be implying that the AOC Press parody account – which often posted moronic gibberish as a play on Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's ability to flub her lines – is too close to what the Democrat Congresswoman is actually like in real life, causing confusion for Twitter users.
[caption id="attachment_176161" align="alignnone" width="1920"]
Email sent to the owner of AOC Press from Twitter explaining the permanent suspension.[/caption]
Human Events spoke with the owner of the account, Mike Morrison, who also had his personal account (@OfficeOfMike) with over 50,000 followers permanently removed.
Morrison, convinced the ban is rooted in political motives, told Human Events the following with regards to the permanent suspension of @AOCPress:
They didn't like how popular an account created by their political opposition had become.
"I think Twitter banned AOC Press for the increasing amounts of attention it's been receiving lately.
"In the past month and a half alone the account grew by roughly 50,000 followers. We've had tweets with over 30,000 likes on them, so I think Twitter decided it was time for [the account] to go. They didn't like how popular an account created by their political opposition had become."
As the creator of the parody, Morrison presumes his personal account was banned by Twitter for having mocked their political allies, though many on the service have pointed to Morrison's Jewish background and the fact he had also tweeted critically of Hamas in recent days.
Other prominent Jewish conservatives were also banned after tweeting about how terror group Hamas should be destroyed.
The ban is the latest foray by Big Tech into the Presidential Election campaign of 2020.
Last week, high profile Trump supporters such as Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Milo Yiannopolous were banned from Facebook and Instagram.
Sofia Carbone is a junior editor at Human Events. You can follow Sofia (for the time being, anyway) on Twitter.
