Twitter temporarily suspends Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene for misinformation about vaccines

(CNN) – Twitter temporarily suspended US lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday night after sharing misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines, a company spokesperson told CNN.

The Republican representative of Georgia, who has a history of inflammatory rhetoric, will not be able to tweet for 12 hours due to Twitter’s policy against people who repeatedly share misinformation.

The social media platform had labeled two tweets from Greene as “misleading” in recent days. If she continues to share misinformation about covid-19 through her Twitter account, Greene could be permanently suspended from the platform.

The temporary suspension occurs when the White House has adopted a confrontational stance with social media platforms on the prevalence of misleading claims about coronavirus vaccines as cases increase across the country.

“I urge all Americans to help curb the spread of health misinformation during the covid-19 pandemic and beyond,” wrote Dr. Vivek Murthy, America’s Chief Health Officer, in a document from 22 pages published last week. “Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people’s health and undermine public health efforts. Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral imperative and civic that will require a joint effort from society “.

President Joe Biden has specifically criticized Facebook for spreading information about the COVID-19 vaccine, but he backed off on his recent accusation that the company was directly responsible for “killing people” and suggested that it was simply allowing it to misinformation is disseminated.

“My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally, that I’m somehow saying that Facebook is killing people, that they will do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine. That’s what I meant.” the president said Monday after a speech at the White House on the state of the economy.

Greene had received a 12-hour suspension from Twitter earlier this year after posting a thread laden with conspiracy ideas about the Georgia Senate election. Some of those tweets were tagged by Twitter with the message: “This claim on voter fraud is in dispute, and this tweet cannot be replied to, retweeted or liked due to the risk of violence.”

The Georgia Republican routinely uses parliamentary procedures to slow down House business, much to the dismay of her colleagues.

But the tactics have helped her win the support of the far right. In April, his campaign announced that he had raised $ 3.2 million in his first three months in office, a staggering amount for a member in his first year.