History has repeated itself. Twitter yesterday (5th May) terminated Kangana Ranaut’s account once again, this time permanently. The reason for termination is “repeatedly” violating its hate speech policies. The suspension came hours after she posted a provocative tweet on the post-election violence in West Bengal.
Shortly before her suspension, Kangana had also posted a short video, sharing that she was distressed by the violence. She later defended her controversial and vitriolic statements in two Instagram posts. Kangana’s sister, Rangoli, was also suspended from Twitter in April for an inflammatory tweet.
Twitter’s Hateful Conduct and Abusive Behaviour policies prohibit users from engaging in “targeted harassment” and also warn against “inciting” others to harm anyone on the basis of their gender, ethnicity, race or religious affiliation among other things. Commenting on the termination, a Twitter spokesperson said, “We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behaviour that has the potential to lead to offline harm. The referenced account has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of Twitter Rules, specifically our Hateful Conduct Policy and Abusive Behaviour Policy. We enforce the Twitter Rules judiciously and impartially for everyone on our service.”