charlie kirk viral video on twitter.
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The Twitter account of conservative activist and author Charlie Kirk was locked over the weekend for "spreading misinformation." Spokesperson Andrew Kolvet said Kirk did not intentionally spread misinformation and was repeating media reports which were later corrected, unbeknowst to Kirk who only found out when his account was locked.
Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, a student-focused right-wing activism organization, confirmed on Sunday that he did not have access to his profile, telling Fox News he was in a "hostage situation" with the social networking platform.
Twitter said in a lock notification to Kirk that one of his posts had violated rules "against posting misleading information about voting." Elaborating, Twitter warned: "You may not post content providing false information about voting or registering to vote."
According to ProPublica, more than 90 percent of the applications were duplicates as users who made requests did not realize they had checked a box indicating they also wanted ballots for the general election. In confusion, application requests were sent in multiple times, including one person who submitted 11 duplicate requests.
Kirk's Twitter account was locked after he posted that it was 370,000 mail-in ballots that were rejected by Pennsylvania state officials, not ballot applications.
He posted: "Pennsylvania has just rejected 372,000 mail-in ballots. One voter was said to have submitted 11 duplicate ballots. Pennsylvania might be the key to winning the White House. What's going on?" (Punctuation added by Newsweek.)
Kirk currently has more than 1.8 million followers on the social media site.
Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, told Newsweek: "Charlie makes every effort to tweet accurate information and to share stories he thinks his followers should know about. Far from spreading misinformation, he was sharing widely reported information at the time, information that was only later updated by certain outlets hours later. In this instance the original reporting by some outlets referenced 372k ballots had been rejected in Pennsylvania. This was later updated to 372k "applications" for ballots. Charlie was only made aware of the change when his account was locked out..