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Twitter recently suspended the account of Joe Kent, a Republican Congressional candidate from Washington, over a tweet that was in support of your 2A rights.

“We will never give up our gun laws, Gun laws are infringements of our god given rights.WA state is back at it, a week ago we caught the board of health discussing forced quarantine, now the legislature going after our 2A. No 2A + forced quarantine = Australia” read the tweet. This was the tweet that got Kent banned from Twitter and he was forced to remove the tweet before his account could be restored.

In a follow-up tweet, Kent said “today I was suspended for defending 2A & calling out WA state’s COVID policies including the potential of forced quarantine.”

This tweet was a purely political statement made by a political candidate on the premier platform for political statements, so why was this tweet taken down? It was the content of this political statement that resulted in its being taken down, or at least that is what we are left to assume. This tweet did not violate any of Twitter’s policies on violence or sexual content.

These tech platforms never explain their bans to the person being banned or to the public in cases of high-profile bans. This poor communication or rather lack thereof is why these platforms are often railed as being unfair. Joe Kent can only be left to assume he was banned because of his political views, he isn’t being told any reason why he just has to assume that the views he shared are the problem because Twitter asked him to delete that tweet.

There are no viable alternatives to Twitter at this time, Gab and Gettr, the two most commonly cited options are riddled with controversies that are both illegitimate and legitimate. If you are not allowed to hold certain views in these popular public forums then how can anyone expect to gain more support for these already commonly held views?

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