#WomenBoycottTwitter in support of Rose McGowan

Twitter hit by boycott on Friday after restricting account of actress McGowan, one of the accusers of Harvey Weinstein.

WomenboycottingTwitter
McGowan said Twitter had blocked her account for violating the privacy rules of the social media platform [Twitter]

Several thousand women are boycotting Twitter on Friday after the platform temporarily suspended the account of US TV actress Rose McGowan.

She is one of the actresses accusing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct.

The boycott calls for a one-day break from Twitter using the #WomenBoycottTwitter hashtag, in response to Twitter’s speech rules, which the protesters say are silencing women.

McGowan took to Instagram to tell her 484.000 followers that Twitter had blocked her account for 12 hours for violating the privacy rules of the social media platform.

Her caption read “TWITTER HAS SUSPENDED ME. THERE ARE POWERFUL FORCES AT WORK. BE MY VOICE”.

Twitter said it had been in touch with McGowan and that it suspended her account “because one of her Tweets included a private phone number, which violates” the platform’s Terms of Service.

The case caused mass outrage online with people joining the #WomenBoycottTwitter movement, accusing the platform of trying to silence McGowan.

Many other celebrities have joined in, including men taking a stand for their female colleagues. However other Twitter users were sceptical of the campaign.

“I understand the idea behind #WomenBoycottTwitter but I don’t personally agree that silence is the right protest to being silenced,” writer Kate Leth said.

Weinstein, one of Hollywood’s most influential producers, has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexual harassment, assault and rape in a series of media investigations by the New York Times and the New Yorker magazine.

He has insisted through a spokeswoman that any sexual contacts he had were consensual.

Police in New York and the United Kingdom have since launched investigations following the publication of an avalanche of claims that go back decades.

Source: Al Jazeera