Twitter suspends Hungarian government’s account ‘without warning’: PM spokesman warns ‘The new world has finally arrived.. tech giants are silencing those with different opinions’
- Nationalist PM Viktor Orban’s official cabinet Twitter account was shutdown
- After several hours it was restored, Budapest said, with no explanation offered
- It comes after Twitter waded into political rows involving Donald Trump
- Orban’s spokesman said it was part of a Silicon Valley crackdown on opinion
Twitter today suspended the Hungarian government’s Twitter account without warning prompting Viktor Orban’s spokesman to ridicule the ‘beautiful new world of tech giants silencing opinions.’
The account @AboutHungary, which tweets on behalf of the nationalist prime minister’s cabinet office, was inaccessible earlier but has since been restored.
It comes after Twitter waded into political rows in the United States earlier this year by flagging President Donald Trump’s tweets for ‘misinformation’.
Orban’s spokesman Zoltan Kovacs used his own personal Twitter account to attack the Silicon Valley company, writing: ‘The beautiful new world has finally arrived, in which tech giants are silencing those who hold different opinions.’
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban holds a news conference in Budapest earlier this year
The government account tweeted shortly before noon on Wednesday: ‘This account was indeed suspended without warning or explanation. It has apparently now been restored – also without explanation’
The government account tweeted shortly before noon on Wednesday: ‘This account was indeed suspended without warning or explanation. It has apparently now been restored – also without explanation.’
The Mail Online has contacted Twitter for comment.
Orban has been lauded for the ‘tremendous job’ he’s done by Trump and has been referred to as a ‘dictator’ by the EU’s Jean Claude Juncker.
It is not clear what may have prompted the action by Twitter.
The Hungarian government’s recent tweets have included two which quote Orban, one which says, ‘Hungary had successfully defeated the epidemic once and would do so again’; and another, ‘Budapest will not agree to anything that could lead to Hungary being under obligation to take in people coming from the Middle East or Africa.’
Twitter has previously flagged tweets by Orban’s ally Trump for ‘abusive language’, ‘inciting violence’ and redirected his followers to World Health Organisation guidance on coronavirus.
Trump has long-threatened to go to war with Silicon Valley over claims that it is biased against conservatives and right-wingers.
Twitter has also been accused of hypocrisy by allowing extremist bigots, such as Iran’s Ayatollah, to spout blatant propaganda with impunity.
Twitter flagged yet another Donald Trump tweet in June, claiming it breached it’s rules on ‘abusive behaviour’ and warning users before they view the text of the post
The President had been voicing his condemnation for the Black Lives Matter riots in Washington DC
After two of his tweets were red-flagged in May, Trump tweeted: ‘Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.
‘We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again.’
Twitter’s algorithms decide the order in which users see new posts, and can be used to make particular content more or less visible.
That has led critics to say that it behaves as a publisher – deciding what people read or see – and not simply as an open forum.
All the while, the California-based company earns billions in advertising revenue.
Conservatives – and many others outside mainstream thought on matters like history, climate change and even the coronavirus – claim that big tech, including Twitter, is waging a campaign against them.