Satanic Temple cries out on Twitter

Jezebel reports that the Temple’s co-founder and a spokesperson for the organization, Lucien Greaves, has made some claims against the social media company.

In a press release, Greaves accuses the company of “egregious failure to apply Twitter’s Terms of Service evenly, or even sensibly.”

The fight between Satanic Temple and Twitter

The problem started with former child-actor Corey Feldman complaining about “Satanic nutbags.”

He also retweeted a call to burn down their headquarters. The call was initially made by a Twitter user named Laurie, who said:

Things took a turn for a worse when Feldman tweeted that a video of a woman, who alleges she was sexually abused by a Satanic cult, made him cry.

This got a response from a self-identified member of the Satanic Temple who wrote:

ALSO READ: Protesters tear down sculpture because it looks like the devil

This was when Greaves, the Temple’s spokesman, stepped in by asking for the arson-suggesting tweet to be reported.

Surprisingly, his account ended up being deleted. According to the spokesman, Twitter’s sent him an email.

It read: “Your account has been suspended and will not be restored” due to violating Twitter’s rules against targeted abuse. “In order to ensure that people feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs on our platform, we do not tolerate abusive behavior.”

The Temple reacted by issuing a press release accusing Twitter of religious discrimination:“The Satanic Temple believes that religious discrimination is clearly evidenced in both the fact that Twitter failed repeatedly to apply their own Terms of Service against a user who openly called for arson against their religious center and the punitive action Twitter took against Greaves’ attempts to correct them.”

Greaves added: “If this were a threat against any other place of congregation, I’m certain Twitter would have responded much differently. Twitter has explicit policies against targeting religious groups and against calls for violence against groups and individuals, but they arbitrarily decided that those rules don’t apply when the threats are directed toward us.”

Twitter reacts to The Satanic Temple

On January 15, 2018, the social media company restored Greaves’ account.

Twitter also sent an email at 1:15 a.m. that said: “After further review, we have unsuspended your account as it does not appear to be in violation of the Twitter Rules. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.”

Twitter has not made an official response to the case.