Twitter banned the accounts @NewsForAll, @FootballForAll and @PoliticsForAll, popular accounts that aggregated news, sports, and politics stories from across the British media.
The accounts were run by Nick Moar, a young supporter of the Conservative Party and the Brexit movement. He is currently head of social media for The Spectator, the conservative magazine formerly edited by Boris Johnson.
BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND – AUGUST 13: Prime Minister Boris Johnson puts on a face mask at the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service HQ during the Prime Minister’s visit to Belfast on August 13, 2020 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (Photo by Brian Lawless – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
It’s the latest example of Twitter shutting down independent journalism and aggregation on its platform. Just a month ago, Twitter banned the Maxwell Trial Tracker, an account posting courtroom updates from the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell.
(INSETS: Ghislaine Maxwell, Jefrrey Epstein)This Tuesday, July 9, 2019 video frame grab shows an aerial view of Little Saint James Island, in the U. S. Virgin Islands, a property purchased by Jeffery Epstein more than two decades ago. Epstein built on the island a stone mansion with cream-colored walls and a bright turquoise roof surrounded by several other structures including the maids’ quarters and a massive, square-shaped white building on one end of the island. (AP Photo/Gianfranco Gaglione)
The Guardian, Britain’s leading left-wing newspaper, wrote that Twitter’s actions were “a sign of how the social media platform has substantial power to deprive news outlets of their audience without warning.”
The account’s “substantial following enabled the account to rapidly disrupt political news cycles by highlighting stories that might otherwise have been missed,” wrote the Guardian.
“Sad to see the Politics for All accounts get banned,” wrote Sam Bowman, director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics.
“It’s crazy how many journalists and journo-adjacent people seemed to openly hate him, just because he wasn’t part of their club. That kind of class system is one of the worst things about this country.”
A spokeswoman for Twitter said the accounts, which had hundreds of thousands of followers, were banned for “platform manipulation and spam,” although she declined to elaborate on how the accounts had broken the policies.
Twitter’s rules against platform manipulation include bans on “posting misleading or deceptive links; e.g., affiliate links,” “operating multiple accounts that interact with one another in order to inflate or manipulate the prominence of specific Tweets or accounts,” and interacting “repeatedly with the same Tweets or accounts from multiple accounts that you operate.”
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.