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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter says it has removed thousands of tweets showing a poster promoting a “trans day of vengeance” protest in support of transgender rights in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.
“We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them. “Vengeance” does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok,” Irwin wrote in the tweet.
But trans activists were quick to point out that “trans day of vengeance” is a meme that has been around in the trans community for years and is not a call to violence — and said Twitter is misguided in its reasoning behind removing the tweets in support of the protest.
In removing the tweets, Twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1641127428507549696">Twitter said it used automated processes to do it quickly at a large scale, without considering what context the tweets were shared in. Because of this, both tweets that were critical of and those that supported the protests were removed.
"They are slow to moderate content targeting trans people, but quick to silence us when we speak out or push back. ’Trans Day of Vengeance' is not a specific day or a call for violence. It’s a meme that’s been around for years, a way of expressing anger and frustration about oppression and violence the trans community faces daily,” Greer said. “Context is everything in content moderation, which is why content policies should be based in human rights and applied evenly, not changed rapidly based on public pressure or news cycles.”
The poster in question is a largely text-based digital flyer. It reads “we want more than visibility” on top, followed by “trans day of vengeance” and “stop trans genocide” as well as the date and time of the planned protest.
Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit liberal advocacy group Fight for the Future, said Twitter’s actions are “the latest example of Big Tech companies employing double standards in content moderation.”
On its website, the group organizing Saturday's protest said it does not condone violence. In a statement posted on the site, the Trans Radical Activist Network and other organizers also strongly rejected any connection between the school shooting in Nashville and Saturday’s protest, which organizers said was planned before the shooting took place.
“Vengeance means fighting back with vehemence,” the protest's organizers wrote on their website. “We are fighting against false narratives, criminalization, and eradication of our existence.”