In what could only be described as a vile violation of human dignity, United Airlines had aviation police officers forcibly drag a passenger off a flight headed from Chicago to Louisville. The incident quickly went viral, causing a storm of anger on Twitter. But it turns out some of the negative tweets are now mysteriously disappearing.
Numerous users are reporting their negative tweets criticizing United Airlines’ abusive behavior have been vanishing into of thin air – and nobody seems to know why.
Ever been to a tech festival? TNW Conference won best European Event 2016 for our festival vibe. See what's in store for 2017. LEARN MORE
Here’s some of the chatter from the Twitterverse:
.@united Here it is, anyway. Harmless, yet clearly @united are desperate for Twitter to help them suppress the justified negativity pic.twitter.com/8vDJgzjHaO — Jay Beecher (@Jay_Beecher) April 10, 2017
Twitter responds to my tweet asking why they are deleting negative tweets about United Airlines…by DELETING my question lol @socialdiva pic.twitter.com/3kZNKut13C — Jay Beecher (@Jay_Beecher) April 10, 2017
How did my Tweet get deleted. Any help @Twitter? It was posted about 15 mins ago in regards to @united but wasn't offensive or mean spirited — Eamonn (@eamonn1202) April 11, 2017
My tweet about #united was deleted. But that will not stop what happened being talked about. — Terry Arnold (@TalkIBC) April 11, 2017
Funny… I tweeted @united earlier today to ask about my flight next week and the tweet is deleted. Begging to regret booking with them. — BitterB (@iknowimbitter) April 11, 2017
What is particularly baffling is that it seems some of the allegedly deleted tweets did not directly mention the incident with the forcibly removed passenger.
While Twitter has previously hidden tweets containing offensive messages from showing up in other people’s timelines as part of its efforts to curb abuse on its platform, deleting tweets against users’ wills goes firmly against the company’s rules.
This sort of moderation is more commonly known as ‘ghost-deleting.’ The term is a little misleading since such tweets are technically not deleted, but merely prevented from appearing in users’ feeds. This measure, however, is usually reserved strictly for offensive tweets – and this is hardly the case here.
Even more confusing is the fact some of the initial tweets exposing United Airlines’ abusive treatment of passengers are still very much present and actively being reshared on the platform.
We have since contacted some of the users who claimed their tweets have been deleted and some of them have confirmed this is indeed the case.
“I can’t seem to find [the tweet anymore],” a user who preferred to remain anonymous told TNW. The individual further remarked that following the unexpected disappearance, they sent “one or two more” tweets that, while similar, weren’t removed from the platform.
Jay Beecher, who also claims had some of his tweets deleted, similarly hasn’t been able to recover them. He further told TNW the following:
I think that they might have been deleting any [tweets] that had the United Airlines tag on them. I found [the deleting] was pretty much automatic. I would put the tweet up, click refresh or go to another page and then return to mine, and the tweet would have disappeared.
On another note, United Airlines was trending and prominently appearing in Moments after the story initially broke yesterday, but it seems it now has been pulled from both.
@Jay_Beecher @united They took the topic off the “moments” as well. Still happened guys. — A.M. (@ThisIsTheAM) April 11, 2017
We have reached out to Twitter for further comment and will update this piece accordingly if we hear back.
Update 1, April 11, 11:10ET: A previous version of this post stated that United Airlines employees were responsible for removing the passenger in question. This is incorrect – it was aviation police officers that performed the removal. We regret this mistake and have updated the post to reflect this accurately.
Update 2, April 11, 11:15ET: Some readers have suggested that the allegedly deleted tweets might have initially appeared as replies to now-deleted tweets, which would explain why they are missing. However, numerous users contacted by TNW rejected this premise, claiming the missing posts were standard tweets.
Glad you made it to the end, read some more:
Apple might owe you money if you have an old iPhone
An ancient programming language could make you bank
Read next: Study: Rich kids on Instagram are killing traditional graffiti
carbodactyl on April 11st, 2017 at 14:27 UTC »
Can someone here try it out and verify it? Going off the article is not good enough. People can just be jumping in the bandwagon and stating that Twitter is deleting their tweets without Twitter actually deleting their tweets. Sounds pretty asshole-ish to do, but that is human nature. We like to be a part of something, mainly if it contributes to the defamation of something that's already dug its own grave (United Airlines in this case). I'm not going against this, I'm just saying that more evidence would be great.
bunglejerry on April 11st, 2017 at 14:02 UTC »
They're doing a pretty shitty job of it; this is all over Twitter.
Facts_About_Cats on April 11st, 2017 at 13:54 UTC »
That would be one way to make money, charge to delete tweets.