marjorie taylor greene
© CNNRep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)
Firebrand Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been suspended from Twitter for a week for spreading COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, marking the latest battle between Big Tech platforms and politicians over public health related censorship.

Twitter has a five strike policy on COVID-19 misinformation, and Greene is on her fourth strike, which results in a seven-day account lock. The Georgia Republican frequently tweets controversial and misleading anecdotes regarding the coronavirus and vaccines.

"These vaccines are failing & do not reduce the spread of the virus & neither do masks," Greene said in a tweet on Monday night.

taylor greene tweet vaccine
© Marjorie Taylor Greene/TwitterTwitter has limited Ms. Greene's tweet to just the 'quote tweet' feature
She also tweeted that the Food and Drug Administration should not approve the coronavirus vaccines because "there are too many reports of infection & spread of #COVID19 among vaccinated people."

The Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are known to be highly effective against the coronavirus, including the new delta variant.


A Twitter spokesperson told CNN that Greene's tweet "was labeled in line with our COVID-19 misleading information policy. The account will be in read-only mode for a week due to repeated violations of the Twitter Rules."

Twitter's coronavirus misinformation policy states that content posted on its platform that is "demonstrably false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of harm (such as increased exposure to the virus, or adverse effects on public health systems) may not be shared on Twitter."

In response to the Twitter ban, Greene said in a statement Tuesday morning that she had been unfairly targeted by the social media giant and took aim at the behavior and rhetoric of the government's top infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as that of former President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"Twitter suspended me for speaking the truth, and tweeting what so many people are saying," she said in a statement. "Twitter suspends me because the truth is so offensive to the fragile hypocrites all over Twitter!"

"It's a good thing my voters couldn't care less about Twitter," she said.
Nihal Krishan is the Technology Reporter for the Washington Examiner