Another Twitter account was suspended over the weekend. To nobody’s surprise, the account promotes pro-life values.

The “Unplanned” movie account was suspended from Twitter without a clear reason. After the suspension claim was challenged and reviewed, the page was reinstated.

This is another case of a conservative Twitter user being inexplicably banned from the platform. This also comes after “Unplanned” was denied advertising time from several major networks and Twitter itself.

Once the account came back online, “Unplanned” spiked in followers from around 20,000 to 200,000 followers over the course of the day. Later on, their follower count decreased back to the 20,000 mark after many users were involuntarily unsubscribed from the account. Eventually, their follower account rose back to the 200,000 followers they had earlier.

Although this suspension probably benefited “Unplanned” – this story garnered a lot of attention - it is strange to see another right-wing viewpoint get removed from Twitter for seemingly no reason. Twitter has inexplicably banned several commentators on the right, but they tend to reinstate the users after further review.

This feeds into a real concern that Twitter harbors a bias against the conservative point of view. All of the accidental, algorithmic suspensions are affecting people with typical right-wing political views.

People that identify as big government, pro-choice democrats are not being banned from the platform by nameless algorithms. Conversely, people with small government, pro-life views are randomly finding themselves locked out of their accounts.

For this reason, it seems clear that Twitter either has a favorable, intentional left-wing bias or they have an unconscious bias against right-wing views and this disdain is built into Twitter’s algorithms.

Many Americans are not in favor of abortion in any case. Even more Americans oppose abortions in at least some cases. For this reason, a movie that tells an anti-abortion story is not particularly radical. It displays a stance that many people have. Twitter should not be censoring this popular political view.

This is another strike against Twitter, and current users should look at this instance and decide if they want to use a platform that censors mainstream views. Current users should consider what else Twitter is silencing if they are willing to suspend accounts that a large portion of America agrees with.

Censorship and partisan antics led me to delete my Twitter account. The more accounts that are suspended like “Unplanned”, the more people will walk away from the service in disgust.

If you want to hear more news and commentary from me, check out my Minds account, Wordpress blog, or my other Publish0x posts. Thanks.

[Photo from Marco Verch, Creative Commons 2.0]