Twitter Blocks Conservative Actor James Woods

Meme shared by Woods sparks action from Twitter.

Actor James Woods is no stranger to expressing his political viewpoints on social media, and even disparaging those who don’t agree with him or with whom he doesn’t agree. Now, however, Twitter is pushing back over some of Woods’ content, specifically a hoax tweet that encourages Democrats not to vote.

Twitter criticised for lack of action

Twitter has come under fire for refusing to take action against some aggressive content, including overtly racist comments and nearly violent posts. Recently, the user who doxxed Dr. Christine Blasey Ford–accuser of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh–and distributed her name, address, and phone number online was only suspended from the website for 12 hours, after which time he reportedly continued to share the information without further consequence.

Woods’ tweet, however, was a fabricated meme that he simply shared that proclaims the right thing to do to give more voice to women’s votes is for men to refrain from voting. Twitter took issue with the meme, claiming that it could interfere with the election process.

This isn’t out of character for Woods

Unfortunately, even the most cursory glance through Woods’ tweets shows that sharing a meme such as that one is tame–almost friendly–compared to some of his lashing out in the past. Woods is particularly fond of calling women in the #MeToo movement liars, lynchers, and hucksters, according to hashtags he’s used.

Even more alarming is his penchant for deriding opposing viewpoints as belonging to trolls, to which he responded to someone, “Thank you so much. But don’t worry about the trolls. Trolls are like clay pigeons. They were made to be blown out of the sky.”

For its part, Twitter simply told Woods to remove the hoax meme tweet in order to regain access to his account, but he has refused. In speaking to an Associated Press journalist about the issue, Woods demonstrated his lack of understanding of Constitutionally protected freedom of speech by saying, ““Free speech is free speech — it’s not Jack Dorsey’s version of free speech.”