Twitter has recently rolled out a number of new measures to curb online abuse and harassment on its platform. This is a progressive step but there is a fine line between regulation and subjugation of freedom of speech. When such helpful tools are exercised on things where they are not needed or do not make sense, it can become pretty ridiculous. According to BBC, something of this sort happened with a Twitter user from Japan who was banned from the site after he posted a picture of a mosquito with a death threat.

Tweeting abuses may lead to one getting banned from Twitter but the decision to ban user @nemuismywife has attracted ridicule on social media. Apparently, the user was being repeatedly disturbed by a mosquito while watching TV and he went ahead and killed it.

After killing the mosquito, he tweeted: “Where do you get off biting me all over while I’m just trying to relax and watch TV? Die! (Actually you’re already dead).” He added a picture of a dead insect to his tweet.

BBC

Guess Twitter did not take the tweet as a harmless one and a little while later, the user received a message from Twitter saying his account had been frozen and cannot be reactivated.

This inevitably angered the user and he created another account to expose the wrong done to him. 

He tweeted from this account expressing his grievance. The tweet said, “My previous account was permanently frozen after I said I killed a mosquito. Is this a violation?”

The tweet has received a huge response on the platform with 29k likes and 33k retweets. Some reports claimed the tweet was flagged by an automated programme and not by a human moderator because of Twitter algorithms that pick offensive words. 

However, something of this sort is ridiculous and a waste of everyone’s time. There is a lot going on social media that actually needs censorship and regulation and the authorities should start concentrating on those instead.