David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire, has been banned from Twitter after several tweets with supporters of President Donald Trump. (AP)
David Simon, the creator of HBO’s “The Wire,” revealed he’s been banned from Twitter after sending a tweet that wished death upon a supporter of President Donald Trump.
In a profanity-laced post to his website Friday, the Emmy-winner said that he cannot tweet about the death of his friend Anthony Bourdain because he was banned—adding that he was “indifferent” to removing the tweets that apparently violated the platform’s rules.
He also blasted the popular social platform for banning users and had some choice words for Twitter cofounder and CEO Jack Dorsey.
In a tweet from June 5, Simon replied to a user who said Trump’s immigration policies were not very different from previous administrations by saying: “You empty s---crest. ‘This kind of thing’ is a new policy announced proudly by [Attorney General] Jeff Sessions and adopted only by this administration. You should die of a slow moving venereal rash that settles in your lying throat.”
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In the post to his website, the author and former Baltimore Sun reporter told Dorsey to “die of boils.”
“As far as I’m concerned, your standards in this instance are exactly indicative of why social media—and Twitter specifically—is complicit in transforming our national agora into a haven for lies, disinformation and the politics of totalitarian extremity. The real profanity and disease on the internet is untouched, while you police decorum.”
Twitter says that users “may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people.”
When contacted by Entertainment Weekly to comment on Simon, Twitter sent the following statement:
“We cannot comment on specific accounts for privacy and security reasons, but it’s against the Twitter Rules to engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice.”
However, the social network has been taken to task over whether its rules are enough to combat hate speech—and some conservative users have decried what they have claimed to be a bias against their views on Twitter.
Simon said Twitter’s policies were targeting the wrong people.
His blistering post started, however, with some kind words for Bourdain.
“I am trying to find words for my friend. I will post something here later if they ever come. For now, just know how much Tony Bourdain—for all his wit and sharp edges, for all his grandiose and larger-than-life persona—was a genuinely good man and careful colleague,” he wrote. “And that doesn’t begin to express how empty the world feels this morning.”
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