DeSantis PAC X account suspended

The X account for the PAC backing Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) in the Republican Presidential primary race was briefly suspended.

DeSantis account broke X rules?

Jack Posobiec noticed the suspension at 10:14 a.m. EDT and shared a screencap. He then promised to investigate further, but in the meantime shared a quote-post from DeSantis communications director Matt Wolking. (Or rather, he shared another screencap. Sharing screencaps instead of quote-posting seems to have become another custom on X, for reasons that are not entirely clear.)

Here is the actual post from Mr. Wolking:

The suspension seems to have been only temporary (for once). For that reason one can more readily trace when the suspension might have occurred. Jack Posobiec noticed the restoration at 11:05 a.m. EDT.

The last post on the Never Back Down account before the suspension came at 9:47 a.m. EDT.

The last several posts before this were all in this vein: DeSantis attacking Trump, especially for refusing to debate. While the subject matter of those posts was debatable, whether they rose to the level of actionable rudeness is unclear.

After the suspension, the DeSantis group posted this:

Wolking accused several pro-Trump accounts of celebrating the suspension, and accused them of “mass reporting.” Nine minutes later he apparently got an answer from X’ Trust and Safety team.

How even an Artificially Intelligent (AI) moderator could regard the output of Never Back Down as spam, is less clear. This would appear to demonstrate a serious weakness in automatic content moderation. Perhaps the DeSantis team has found the troublemakers that behave much like the Twitter 1.0 Trust and Safety Team.

Background

Trump announced his refusal to take part in the Fox News debate tonight in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Instead he will sit for an interview with Tucker Carlson.

Natalie Winters, co-host of Steve Bannon’s War Room, threw shade on all Republicans who till take part in the debate.

Debates aside, rumor has Elon Musk abruptly switching his support from Ron DeSantis to Vivek Ramaswamy. The latter has overtaken DeSantis in the polls to become the new runner-up to Trump.