New Jersey State Senator Declan O’Scanlon was silenced on Twitter and was only reinstated when he agreed to delete his tweet.
The tweet, posted on June 25, read “Given that we have crushed Covid with combination of natural immunity and voluntary uptake there is no reason anyone should be compelled to take the vaccine. Restrictions/mandates/vaccine passports all uncalled for.”
Twitter’s response to O’Scanlon’s Twitter post was to lock him out of his account without giving a specific reason as to why.
On Twitter, Republicans blasted the lawmaker’s detention. The state GOP called the action a “continuous and rising limitation of freedom of expression.”
On O’Scanlon’s timeline, the tweet has been deleted, with a warning that says, “This Tweet is no longer available because it violates the Twitter Rules.”
According to O’Scanlon, social media platforms should be seen as town squares. He says that it’s scary that they may choose to limit seemingly benign information at any time.
“That they could so randomly choose to censor relatively innocuous communication. That’s a scary thing.”
