Twitter bans man for death threat against mosquito

By Team Asianet Newsable | First Published Sep 1, 2017, 4:03 PM IST

The user was agitated over a mosquito bite when he was relaxing at home watching TV.
He also added the picture of the dead mosquito.

Twitter has been tightening the ropes when it comes to keeping abuse at bay, but the recent ban on an account of a person has made it face social media ire.

Twitter has banned a user from Japan for making death threat against a mosquito, reports BBC. As per the report, a Twitter user named @nemuismywife was banned from using the social networking site. The user was agitated over a mosquito bite when he was relaxing at home watching TV, and tweeted: "Where do you get off biting me all over while I'm just trying to relax and watch TV? Die! (Actually you're already dead)."

Tap to resize

Latest Videos

Tap to resize

He also added the picture of the dead mosquito. He soon received a message from Twitter stating that his account has been suspended and cannot be reactivated. He then made a new account named @DaydreamMatcha and tweeted critizing twitter's decision: "My previous account was permanently frozen after I said I killed a mosquito. Is this a violation?" This really irked many users, who began re-tweeting it.

Twitter has faced public backlash for its inability to handle abuse in the past, and has been taking some active steps to curb hateful and extremist content. It has setup a huge team that monitors abusive content.

Twitter’s rules clearly mention accounts and related accounts engaging in the activities like harassment, violent threats and hateful content may be temporarily locked or even suspended permanently. For instance, if someone makes threats of violence or promotes violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism.

The rules also add that, "You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease."

However, it has also made some errors in the past too, and the japan user isn't the first. Like this one:

Facebook thinks I'm a terrorist. Apparently sending them a screenshot of my passport is not good enough for them to reopen my account.

— Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) 17 November 2015

While the companies have written down rules, the implementation hasn't been effective. Moreover, these are new-age problems, which cannot be defied with a set of rules.

For more reliable and latest news