When Marion Smith, the executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, tweeted a video last week showing the destruction of China’s history and culture under tyrant Mao Zedong, Twitter hid the video, claiming it contained “sensitive content.”
Hey, @TwitterSupport: Why is this video footage I posted of Mao’s Cultural Revolution so “sensitive” it needs to be hidden?! The historical footage was carefully selected to **not** show any actual blood violence. https://t.co/cYLMbWzkZN pic.twitter.com/vead58At8Z
— Marion Smith (@smithmarion) July 9, 2020
It was only after the video had been viewed more than 1 million times that Twitter flagged the tweet. The video shows how “violent ideologues pulled down statues, destroyed holy sites, and humiliated and murdered those who dissented,” Smith said, much like what we are seeing today in America’s own 21st century cultural revolution.
While Twitter has since removed the sensitivity warning, Smith implied he doesn’t think the social media giant’s censorship was a coincidence.
“The day before my post was censored, the Communist Party published an editorial article attacking me personally, posting my photo, and citing my twitter account activity in special detail,” Smith said in a statement. “The same day I was censored on Twitter, the CCP publicly threatened to sue the organization I lead.”
Smith said the video, which is composed of archival video footage, was carefully edited to avoid showing any actual blood or violence, intentionally trying to avoid violating Twitter’s policy on sensitive content.
A Twitter spokesperson told The Federalist that Smith’s tweet, “was marked as sensitive in the air and it has since been corrected.”
Last June, a few days before the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, Twitter temporarily suspended hundreds accounts belonging to Chinese dissidents.
https://twitter.com/robert_spalding/status/1134600602095370240?lang=en
Twitter apologized, claiming it was part of a “routine action” taken to curb “spam and other inauthentic behaviors.”
