It’s been a week since X (Twitter) shocked the conservative filmmaking group Hollywood 4 Freedom by suspending their account. The founding members of the group are wondering what went wrong and whether it’s censorship still in action on the once-leftist platform.
On Saturday (March 15), the conservative entertainment organization Hollywood 4 Freedom, or H4F, expressed their disappointment and confusion in a post on their website announcing the suspension of their X account with the handle @Hollywood4F, which was suspended out of nowhere on Wednesday, March 12. They received an email from X notifying them of the suspension:
Your account, Hollywood4F, has been suspended for violating the X Rules after review by a human moderator. Specifically, for violating our rules against authenticity. You may not use our services to engage in inauthentic activity that undermines the integrity of X.
The message left the H4F team groping for a real explanation as to what was inauthentic about their presence or activity on X. The group’s post announcing their suspension referred to the social media platform owned by Elon Musk as:
It seems that the only thing inauthentic about this situation is this lame explanation from X. With no warning or reasonable process for us content creators to observe, this takes us all back to 2020 and does nothing for our confidence in Elon’s $44 Billion dollar purchase.
H4F, based out of Burbank (CA), produces a weekly podcast called The New Hollywood Show co-hosted by three founding members of the organization – Tatum Shank, Timothy Glover, and Siaka Massaquoi. In their latest episode of The New Hollywood Show, the group expressed their disappointment with X and questioned the suspension of their account. Shank concluded that the incident goes to show that Rumble is the only credible social platform for conservatives.
H4F does not maintain an active presence on other social media platforms except Instagram where they also experienced a few such issues with their account. While Instagram is owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, a leftist company, X has been considered neutral since it was purchased by Elon Musk, who now has reworked his public and political image as a MAGA conservative. Targeting a conservative account is not expected on X anymore even for expression of hard political positions. Timothy Glover of H4F says that they have not engaged in any incendiary political vitriol on X:
“We have kept all our commentary on entertainment. Political comments, if any, have been brief but always in context of how those current topics relate to the entertainment landscape.”
At the time of this writing, H4F remains suspended on X and its team members are still wondering if they would get some clarity from the platform on this issue anytime soon.