Twitter, which has a history of declining to comment on specific suspensions did, after a few hours, comment on the suspension. The official Twiiter Safety account clarified that one of McGowan's tweets had included a private phone number, which is prohibited in the site's privacy policy.
Some of McGowan's more confrontational tweets were about Affleck. There's one tweet that simply reads "Ben Affleck f--- off," and another, tagging Affleck's Twitter handle, that directly accuses him of lying. "'GODDAMNIT! I TOLD HIM TO STOP DOING THAT' you said that to my face. The press conf I was made to go to after assault," she wrote.
Other tweets, some using the hashtag #RoseArmy, have accused other associates and backers of Weinstein's projects over the years of being "guilty" as well.
Twitter introduced the 12-hour account limitation earlier this year. This particular punishment does not rely entirely on user reports of possible rule-breaking but instead can also be triggered automatically. If an account is tagging others in potentially abusive tweets or firing off a great deal of similar tweets flagged by the system as potentially abusive, those can be factors that prompt a suspension, the company said at the time.
But like many of Twitter's anti-abuse practices, there's a lot of murkiness to the enforcement. Even as the platform takes more aggressive steps to fight harassment and abuse, the actual enforcement of the rules designed to protect its users remains inconsistent.
Twitter has previously said that it takes the "newsworthiness" and "public interest" of a tweet into account when deciding whether to take action against it or not. For instance, Twitter's rules ban tweets that contain "threats of violence" or those that "promote violence," but the platform has allowed this tweet from President Donald Trump to remain on the platform:
"Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!"
The potential anti-violence rule violation - as well as the newsworthiness - of this tweet are both clear. And there is an extremely strong case to be made for the newsworthiness of McGowan and her tweets in the Weinstein story, a story in which she is directly involved as a victim. But Twitter seems to have come to a different conclusion about McGowan's tweet, without releasing a public explanation for its reasoning.
According to the New York Times, McGowan reached a $100,000 settlement with Weinstein in 1997 for "an episode in a hotel room during the Sundance Film Festival." Although she initially declined to comment to the Times, she has since, in real time, became one of the loudest advocates for his victims.
