Twitter suspends Project Veritas account over privacy violations

[February 12, 2021]    (Reuters) - Twitter Inc said on Thursday it suspended the account of conservative activist group Project Veritas for repeated violations of its private information policy, which prohibits sharing, or threatening to share others' private information without consent.

People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken September 27, 2013. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration

The social media company also temporarily locked the account of the group's founder, James O'Keefe, for violating the same policy, a Twitter spokeswoman said in a statement.

Project Veritas said in a public Telegram post that the Tweet that led to the suspension was a video of one of their journalists asking Facebook's VP of integrity Guy Rosen a question about censorship. https://bit.ly/3755ItM

"The reporter on the ground never revealed the location," the group said, adding that it was appealing the suspension as no privacy was violated.

Twitter said O'Keefe was required to delete the violative Tweet to regain access to his personal account. He posted a video on Twitter of him doing that.

(Reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; editing by John Stonestreet)

[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.