Twitter Censors Warnings On Dangerous Consumer Products

Twitter account shakeout puts consumers at risk

June 25, 2019, Los Angeles, CA – Twitter's efforts to target suspicious accounts has a serious and potentially deadly consequence. Legitimate account holders and valuable information are being removed in Twitter's aggressive attempt to pursue disinformation and abusers of its platforms. Perhaps the account suspensions have a more nefarious foundation.

The Counterfeit Report, an award-winning consumer advocate and counterfeit watchdog, utilized Twitter for years to provide research and information to consumers about dangerous and potentially deadly counterfeit, fraudulent, and replica products sold on e-commerce websites including Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Alibaba. The alerts, appearing several times a week, attracted hundreds-of-thousands of viewers, including government agencies, news outlets, and industry specialists.

Consumer hazards, including counterfeit prescription pill dies for OxyContin, XANAX, and Viagra sold on eBay and Amazon, counterfeit and nonexistent electronics, and deadly Li-ion batteries are just some examples featured in The Counterfeit Report's Twitter posts.

If you don't use the mentioned prescriptions or the batteries for laptop, flashlight, camera, battery packs, hoverboards, and e-cigarette and vape devices, why should you care? Twitter users would learn that the fraudulent items are proving to be a very real hazard -- a dangerous and deadly risk for consumers as well as bystanders. For example;

• Deaths from opioids and fentanyl disguised as opioid tablets resulted in over 183,000 deaths. Where can the pill dies come from? The pill manufacturing dies are sold on eBay and Amazon. Twitter provides an excellent consumer education medium, but Twitter blocked the reports.



• The FAA reported 241 air/airport incidents (fires and smoke) involving lithium batteries carried as cargo or baggage have been recorded. Three major aircraft accidents were reported where lithium battery cargo shipments were implicated. Deaths from Li-ion battery include a 38-year-old Florida man who died when an e-cigarette device exploded causing a "projectile wound to the head," and burning 80% of his body. His home had extensive fire damage, others have burned to the ground. Thousands of reported fire and explosion incidents resulting in emergency-room visits in the U.S. can be found, including acute injuries, meaning that the victim required hospitalization and may have suffered the loss of a body part. Batteries are often used close to the users face in vape devices, or put in pockets. Amazon, whose policy prohibits the sale of the 18650 batteries, has sold tens-of-thousands of the batteries to unsuspecting consumers and continues to allow them on their website, as well as participating as a direct seller of the fraudulent items. The batteries below are all fraudulent.

Inexplicably, Twitter suspended The Counterfeit Report's account last week and multiple inquiries to the company went unanswered. Even more appalling is Twitter's notification; "We’re writing to let you know that your account has been suspended due to multiple or repeat violations of our rules. Please do not reply to this email, or send us new appeals for this account as we won’t monitor them." No other explanation was included.

Twitter has some explaining to do. Was this an independent decision based on actual factual examination by Twitter, arbitrary, or in response to a complaint from an e-commerce giant? Apparently, Twitter's commitment to free speech on its platform is as lacking as Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba are at stopping the flood of counterfeit and dangerous products continually listed on their websites.

Twitter can't be trusted to provide an impartial and credible social media platform and is failing to adequately anticipate and combat disinformation. In 2015, Twitter's then-chief executive, Dick Costolo, acknowledged the problem in a company memo: "We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years."