Twitter permanently bans ‘My Pillow’ CEO, staunch Trump supporter

It was not immediately clear which posts by Lindell on Twitter triggered the suspension of his account.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, a familiar face to Americans as he does his own advertising for his innovative pillows, has been permanently banned from Twitter.

Lindell, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, continued to post about election fraud and say that Trump clearly won the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Twitter decided to ban Lindell, who founded bedding company My Pillow, due to “repeated violations” of its civic integrity policy, a spokesperson said in a statement.

The policy was implemented last September and is targeted at fighting disinformation, but appears to be imposed inconsistently and, critics say, in a way that overwhelmingly targets conservatives.

It was not immediately clear which posts by Lindell on Twitter triggered the suspension of his account.

Lindell, a Trump supporter, has continued to insist that the presidential election was rigged even after President Joe Biden’s administration began.

The issue again underscores social media’s power and issues of free speech. Prior to blocking Lindell’s account, Twitter locked several of his tweets “due to a risk of violence.” However, Lindell didn’t call for violence in any of the tweets.

In one, he said:

Here are the pages of the machine voter fraud evidence that came out last week and the media including Twitter has tried to bury it! This is an attack on our country! pic.twitter.com/FhpNgNSda7

— Mike Lindell (@realMikeLindell) January 16, 2021

Since Twitter banned former President Donald Trump, it has also banned over 70,000 QAnon accounts. QAnon is a pro-Trump conspiracy theory.

Many Trump supporters tried to move to another Twitter-like platform, Parler, which was abruptly kneecapped by Google, Amazon and Apple. Parler says it will return after building up its own infrastructure.

The free speech debate surrounding these moves have formed more or less along political lines, with liberal politicians and left-wing sites like VOX supporting the ban, saying “Deplatforming is effective at rousting extremists from mainstream internet spaces.”

Conservatives warn of the “unchecked power” of social media. Politicians like Nikki Haley, former UN Ambassador and South Carolina governor, compared Twitter’s Trump ban to the “silencing” that goes on in China.

Even some politicians worldwide, who are not part of the Right, have expressed their concern, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, with the latter vowing to form an international group to fight such censorship.

“I don’t like censorship,” Obrador said, speaking of the then still temporary blocking of Trump’s accounts just after the Capitol riots. “I don’t like anyone to be censored and for them to have their right taken away to send a message on Twitter or on Facebook.”

AP contributed to this report.