The grieving father of a young man killed by an illegal immigrant is accusing Twitter of censorship after his post attacking sanctuary cities was pulled.
Twitter Halts Grieving Dad’s Promoted Tweets of THIS VIDEO, Calling Deceased Son’s Story Offensive https://t.co/F7lfrZnseB pic.twitter.com/mpDsVwFPmS
— CAPS (@Crowdifornia) June 6, 2017
Don Rosenberg’s son was killed in a traffic accident with an illegal immigrant in San Francisco in 2010, and he has made it his mission since that time to warn about the dangers of the sanctuary city policies he believes are responsible.
He says Twitter is playing politics with his story; “It looks like it was done politically, that they didn’t want this message out there so they just shut it down.”
The 30-second commercial was being promoted on Twitter for a week until the site pulled it Tuesday, citing a violation of content policy. Twitter removes material that is either offensive, vulgar, or obscene, but it’s not clear what is offensive about the ad, and Rosenberg hasn’t been given an explanation why it was removed.
“We’re trying to find out. We really don’t know because they’re not telling us.”
It was funded by Californians For Population Stabilization, an anti-illegal immigration group, and Media Director Joe Guzzardi says, “The ad is inspired by the California Assembly and apparently Governor Jerry Brown’s determination to pass legislation that will in effect make California a sanctuary state.”
He’s talking about SB 54, which would mandate sanctuary city policies statewide.
Guzzardi says he wants people to focus on making California a safer place for its citizens and legal residents and worry less about what happens to illegal immigrants.
Rosenberg wonders why Twitter chose to ban his story about the death of his son, but doesn’t exercise that same censorship across the board; “It’s amazing that terrorists can use Twitter pretty much with no retaliation whatsoever, but we put an ad out that’s 100 percent factual…and they blocked it.”
Twitter has taken steps to remove some pro-terrorism content in the past. The site reportedly suspended hundreds of thousands of accounts in the last six months of 2016 for promoting terrorism, although tweets celebrating terrorist attacks do continue to appear.
Twitter has not responded for comment on why they removed the ad.