The Georgia Republican’s account was permanently suspended
under the “strike” system Twitter launched in March, which uses artificial
intelligence to identify posts about the coronavirus that are misleading enough
to cause harm to people. Two or three strikes earn a 12-hour account lock; four
strikes prompt a weeklong suspension, and five or more strikes can get someone
permanently removed from Twitter.
In a statement on the messaging app Telegram, Greene blasted
Twitter’s move as un-American. She wrote that her account was suspended after
tweeting statistics from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a
government database which includes unverified raw data.
“Twitter is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth,”
Greene said. “That’s fine, I’ll show America we don’t need them and it’s time
to defeat our enemies.”
In July, Twitter suspended Greene for a week after President
Joe Biden urged tech companies to take stronger action against bogus vaccine
claims that are “killing people.” Twitter has defended its efforts to keep
dangerous misinformation about COVID-19 off its site, saying it has removed
thousands of tweets and challenged millions of accounts worldwide.
Among Greene’s final tweets was one Saturday that falsely
referenced “extremely high amounts of covid vaccine deaths,” according to her
Telegram account, which appears to mirror her now-banned Twitter feed when
compared with Greene tweets stored in the Internet Archive.
On Sunday, the White House’s top medical adviser, Dr.
Anthony Fauci, said the U.S. has been seeing almost a “vertical increase” of
new COVID-19 cases, now averaging 400,000 cases a day, with hospitalizations
also up. The omicron variant of COVID-19 has driven a surge in new cases across
the U.S.
Twitter had previously suspended Greene’s personal account
for periods ranging from 12 hours to a full week. The ban applies to Greene’s
personal account, @mtgreenee, but does not affect her official Twitter account,
@RepMTG.