Journalist and author Séamas O’Reilly has said he finds it “very, very funny” that his account on X, formerly Twitter, was suspended just hours

Journalist says he finds it ‘surreal’ to have account on X suspended after writing critique of platform

submited by

Style Pass

2024-02-13 00:00:04

Journalist and author Séamas O’Reilly has said he finds it “very, very funny” that his account on X, formerly Twitter, was suspended just hours after he posted about an article he wrote for the Irish Examiner in which he said the platform was unusable due to bots.

The author’s account had over 100,000 followers and was around 14 years old, he said. Having gone through his posts from Saturday, which is when the account was suspended, he has come to the conclusion that the post that caused the suspension was to do with his article on bots.

“So, to me, it’s pretty blatant and obvious that [an] Irish-headquartered tech behemoth, operated by the world’s most famous man, has suspended an Irish journalist for making those points in an Irish newspaper,” O’Reilly said.

“I don’t actually think that the removal of my personal account is actually riveting and important global news in and of itself; I’m not that arrogant. But I do think it is a pretty hilarious bit of overreach from the guy who is a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist. So I do think it is quite noteworthy and quite surreal, to be honest.”