Satanic Temple Threatens to Sue Twitter over Religious Discrimination

Twitter’s actions were discriminatory

Twitter could be sued by The Satanic Temple (TST) for religious discrimination.[/tweetit] This all began with Corey Feldman, the former child actor, ranting about what he termed “Satanic nutbags.” Feldman then retweeted a call which asked to burn down TST headquarters. All this culminated in the suspension of the Twitter account of Lucien Greaves, the TST spokesperson. Greaves is also the co-founder of TST.

Satanic Temple Threatens to Sue Twitter over Religious Discrimination[/tweetthis]

Greaves claims that his Twitter account was suspended without any notice. This happened when he requested his followers to all report a specific tweet which asked for Satanic Temple to be burned so that the structure gets demolished. This tweet was sent by a woman with @LaurieGAtta1 Twitter handle. This post was subsequently shared by Corey Feldman.

TST, is a group which pushes for active separation of church and state as well as reproductive freedom. Members of this organization say they are a bunch of sincere and practicing non-theistic Satanists. The problem is many believe that the TST is actually affiliated with Satan and thus they receive violent threats from many people. Twitter user Laurie is obviously one of them. Feldman, who later retweeted Laurie, added his own diatribe against TST: he claimed to have cried after he allegedly viewed a video which a Satanic cult sexually abuses a woman.

The TST intervened at this point, with a member pointing out that child abuse or any kind of sexual abuse is not supported by Satanic Temple. The TST member asked Feldman to refrain from any kind of retweet which the member termed “terroristic threats” against TST. Greaves then requested his supporters to report the tweet whose contents exhort arson. The co-founder also asked Feldman as to why he shared it. A number of people did report the Tweet and got the response that it did not violate the terms of service associated with the site. When told about the Twitter response, Greaves described Laurie as an asshole.

I’ve seen Twitter do some capricious garbage but this is really bizarre. https://t.co/tBaJcxiKcn

— Jess Zimmerman (@j_zimms) January 13, 2018

Greaves then discovered that Twitter has permanently suspended his account. He did not receive any prior warning. Twitter told him that he has engaged in targeted abuse and the social media company did not tolerate abusive behaviors of any sort. TST then accused the Twitter of blatant religious discrimination on two counts: failure to seriously take the arson tweet and also deleting Greaves' account. Twitter subsequently restored the account.

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