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Conservatives think Twitter is censoring an anti-abortion movie
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Conservatives think Twitter is censoring an anti-abortion movie

Ellen Ioanes—
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Unplanned Movie/YouTube

The account was reinstated.

Supporters of the movie Unplanned criticized Twitter over the weekend for what they said was censorship of the film’s account.

The movie, which took in $6 million on its opening weekend, is based on the memoir of Abby Johnson, who was the director of a Planned Parenthood clinic until, she said, participating in an abortion procedure caused her to become pro-life.

The account tweeted on Saturday that it had lost followers after it was suspended on accident.

A Twitter spokesperson told the Daily Dot the suspension “wasn’t directly about this account. When an account violates the Twitter Rules, the system looks for linked accounts to mitigate things like ban evasion. In this case, the account was mistakenly caught in our automated systems for ban evasion.”

However, Twitter declined to elaborate on any accounts linked to the film.

“We reinstated the account as soon as it was brought to our attention,” the social media company said via email and explained that the follower counts would take time to replenish after the account’s reinstatement.

Twitter users, including National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch, complained about not being able to follow the account over the weekend.

Donald Trump Jr. also tweeted what appears to be a video of someone attempting to follow the account, and not being able to.

By Monday morning, the account tweeted that its follower levels were up to almost 200,000.

The movie also drew attention from Vice President Mike Pence.

“So good to see movie theaters across the country showing @UnplannedMovie — a deeply inspiring new pro-life film based on the best-selling book by @AbbyJohnson. More & more Americans are embracing the sanctity of life because of powerful stories like this one,” he tweeted in support of the film.

The controversy is just the latest where conservatives on Twitter claim that the platform is censoring them. Twitter told the Daily Dot, “We enforce our rules dispassionately and do not engage in so-called shadow banning,” a common accusation lobbed at the social media company.

But fans of the movie also claimed that their tweets about the film weren’t trending on Twitter.

The movie debuted just after Georgia legislators passed a bill that would prohibit abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected—usually about six weeks into a pregnancy.

H/T Newsweek

Ellen Ioanes

Ellen Ioanes

Ellen Ioanes is the FOIA reporter at the Daily Dot, where she covers U.S. politics. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School, and her work has appeared in the Guardian, the Center for Public Integrity, HuffPost India, and more.

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