Twitter said its support team has reviewed the Western Standard’s Twitter account and determined it made an error in locking the news outlet out. .“We’ve determined there was no violation and have restored your account to full functionality,” said Twitter in a Sunday email. .“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate you taking the time to submit your appeal request to us.” .Western Standard publisher Derek Fildebrandt said Twitter should “hang its collective head in shame for banning a news provider for more than a week for the simple act of reporting news that it’s over-sensitive censors found to be inconvenient to them.” .“They banned the Western Standard without cause, and did not respond in anything approaching a reasonable period of time to our appeal,” said Fildebrandt. .“This is why we are still hopeful that one day Twitter will have new ownership that is more concerned with fostering open and free debate, and not with pleasing authoritarian politicians.”.Twitter locked the Western Standard out of its account on August 10 for two stories pertaining to COVID-19 vaccines, which allegedly violated the platform’s rule about "spreading misleading and harmful information" about the virus. .READ MORE: Twitter suspends Western Standard for stories about COVID vaccines.Despite Twitter's accusation, the stories did not discuss the effectiveness or risks of vaccination, but were about consent and how COVID-19 poses a lower risk to young people. .“Under this policy, we require the removal of content that may pose a risk to people’s health, including content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information,” said Twitter. .The first story tweeted which violated Twitter’s policy was titled Sask social workers vaccinating foster kids for COVID without permission by Christopher Oldcorn. .READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: Sask social workers vaccinating foster kids for COVID without permission.Social workers with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Social Services, Child and Family Programs had been vaccinating children for COVID-19 without their parents or caregivers permission, according to multiple people familiar with the matter..This story was tweeted with the caption “In another email, a social worker said the child is the ‘property of the government’ and that they ‘have to’ get the child vaccinated for COVID-19." .The second story was headlined Denmark bans COVID vaccines for children by Jonathan Bradley. .READ MORE: Denmark bans COVID vaccines for children.The Danish government restricted children under 18 years old from receiving COVID-19 vaccines in June because of the age group’s lack of serious outcomes from the virus. .This story was tweeted with the caption “The Danish government has barred children under 18 years old from taking COVID-19 vaccines because of the low risk they face from the virus.” .Twitter ordered the Western Standard to delete the tweets. A one-week suspension would kick in once the tweets were removed. .The Western Standard refused to remove the tweets.
