Hudson Valley Gay Dems’ Mystery Twitter Ban Lifted
Club spent weeks demanding answers; social media platform now says it was an error
Hudson Valley Stonewall Democrats president Anthony Nicodemo (in sports jacket with pin), seen here
standing next to Congressmember Eliot Engel of Westchester and the Bronx, spent weeks demanding
answers from Twitter after his club was tossed in Twitter jail.
BY MATT TRACY
That took awhile!
Following a weekslong
suspension from
Twitter without explanation,
an LGBTQ political club in
New York’s Hudson Valley is fi nally
back on the social media platform.
Twitter confi rmed on December
27 that @hvstonewalldems — the
Twitter account representing Hudson
Valley Stonewall Democrats
encompassing Westchester, Rockland,
Putnam, Dutchess, and Orange
Counties — was reinstated,
ending a seven-week ban.
The account was restored shortly
after Gay City News sought comment
from the social media giant
about the suspension. A Twitter
spokesperson said the club was
suspended because its account or
one of its tweets accidentally got
caught in a spam fi lter.
“The fact that they re saying it
was spam is ludicrous,” Anthony
Nicodemo, the club’s president, told
Gay City News after the account
went back online. Nicodemo spent
more than a month issuing public
pleas on Twitter expressing frustration
over his club’s sudden and
HUDSON VALLEY STONEWALL DEMOCRATS
inexplicable suspension. He said
the suspension occurred shortly
after his club rolled out numerous
political endorsements at once and
he suspects that could have triggered
the ban, but he has been left
in the dark.
“If you’re going to allow hate
speech from the president, it’s
kind of diffi cult when an LGBTQ
organization like ours would get
blocked without so much as an explanation,”
said Nicodemo, an out
gay basketball coach and athletic
director at Greenburgh North-Castle
Union Free School District who
was profi led by Gay City News in
2015 and received a Gay City News
Impact Award in 2017 .
The club’s account remained
suspended as of the afternoon of
December 27, but was back online
by shortly after 5 p.m. that same
day. However, there appeared to be
lingering issues with its reinstatement
because the club was listed
as having zero followers. The club’s
last tweet had come on November
6.
The drawn-out suspension came
at a time when 2020 political races
are heating up nationwide and the
House of Representatives has approved
articles of impeachment
against President Donald Trump.
Nicodemo said the ban negatively
impacted the club’s ability to keep
its members in the loop on the latest
political developments.
“We weren’t able to inform our
followers what was going on,” Nicodemo
said.
Stonewall Democrats of New
York City had on multiple occasions
joined in on the effort to hold
Twitter accountable for the sudden
suspension. The citywide club on
December 27 asked multiple specialists
in inclusion and diversity
at Twitter to intervene.
“As an Inclusion & Diversity specialist
at Twitter and a New Yorker,
can you help an LGBTQ Democratic
club just up the Hudson
River get its account reinstated?
It’s been months,” the New York
City-based club wrote on Twitter.
“They do good work. As longtime
ONLINE WORLD
tweeters ourselves, we can vouch
for them!”
Nicodemo maintained pressure
on Twitter throughout the suspension.
On November 27, he stated that
his club had been suspended for
three weeks, yet Twitter did not
suspend former Major League
Baseball player Aubrey Huff for
tweeting that he was “getting my
boys trained up on how to use a
gun in the unlikely event that @
BernieSanders beats @realDonaldTrump
in 2020. In which case
knowing how to effectively use
a gun under socialism will be a
must.”
Now Nicodemo and his members
can breathe a sigh of relief — but
he wants the social media giant to
at least show some transparency
when handing down suspensions.
“Hopefully Twitter will do a better
job to let people know,” he said.
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