Twitter blocks New York Times account ‘mistakenly’ for 24 hours

NEW YORK: Micro-blogging website Twitter blocked New York Times’s international team account after freezing it for “violating Twitter’s rule against hateful conduct”, but restored it after 24 hours with an apology.

In a statement, Twitter admitted it was an “error” and apologized “for any inconvenience this may have caused”, reported NYT.

The account @nytimesworld was blocked after a tweet from it promoted an article about Candaian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s apology to indigenous people in two provinces.

The NY Times account is not the flagship handle of NYT. This account is used by New York Times international reporting team to promote its coverage to nearly two million followers, by usually posting 50 to 100 tweets a day.

The tweet that led to account being blocked last Saturday. Post unfreezing the account on Sunday, Twitter issued a statement to NYT, “”After reviewing the account, it appears that one of our agents made an error. We have flagged this issue so that similar mistakes are not made going forward.”

People on the micro-blogging platform were divided in opinion about the whole incident. While some criticized Twitter, others thought NYT had it coming.