Twitter just punished the @Khamenei_ir account for promoting the murder of Salman Rushdie but it wasn't as serious a violation as tweeting 'learn to code' at a journo

Greg P. | 7:01 PM on February 15, 2019

The tweet we told you about earlier from Ayatollah Khamenei promoting a bounty for the death of author Salman Rushdie is no longer available online:

A Twitter spokesperson just said this tweet from Iran's leader violated its terms of service and has been made unavailable.

"It's against our rules to make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people." pic.twitter.com/LvLmIHQDFd

— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) February 15, 2019

So basically, tweeting “learn to code” at a journo gets you suspended but a tweet calling for the death of an author gets you put in “read-only mode”?

The @khamenei_ir account will go into read-only mode until the offending tweet is deleted by the user. (The account hasn't tweeted since yesterday.) The public will also not be able to see the tweet.

So far, no suspension or removal of the account, according to Twitter spox.

— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) February 15, 2019

Here’s what Iran did wrong, FWIW:

Here's a link to the policy the tweet specifically violated: https://t.co/wzav3GNLP3

— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) February 15, 2019

Again, we ask Jack to explain himself:

This is the crux of the problem. In multiple interviews, @jack has said Trump's tweets are newsworthy and wouldn't directly answer what it would take to get the president reprimanded or removed.

But what happens when another world leader tweets a threat?https://t.co/km7KFOn4Qw

— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) February 15, 2019

Twitter reportedly said they handled this at “the tweet level” so there was no need for an account suspension: