Rose McGowan’s Temporary Twitter Suspension Explained
Rose McGowan was temporarily suspended from Twitter after including someone’s private information in a post meant to highlight her troubled history with Harvey Weinstein, his brother Bob and top brass at the Weinstein Company, The Washington Post reports.
In a statement, a Twitter representative explained that McGowan’s account was “temporarily locked because one of her tweets included a private phone number, which violates our Terms of Service.” The site added, “We will be clearer about these policies and decisions in the future.”
when will nuclear war violate your terms of service? https://t.co/72FiiyoZ59
— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017
The actress revealed the suspension Wednesday night in an Instagram post featuring a message from Twitter saying that she had violated the site’s rules. It was initially unclear what tweets had prompted the suspension, and McGowan suggested in the caption that she had been targeted for her tweets criticizing Weinstein and his enablers. “Twitter has suspended me,” McGowan wrote in the caption. “There are powerful forces at work. Be my voice.”
As it turned out, the offending content was likely a since-deleted photograph McGowan tweeted October 11th. Per the Post, the tweet read, “Anonymously sent to me. They all knew. It starts here.” Attached was an image of an e-mail offering to set up a meeting with Bob (ostensibly, Bob Weinstein) at a hotel. However, the image also revealed the full e-mail signature of the sender, including their phone number. As of Thursday morning, following the removal of that image, McGowan’s account has been unlocked.
Prior to Twitter’s statement, it had been assumed that McGowan had been removed for her comments about Weinstein and/or his alleged enablers. In a different tweet, she repeated her claim that others at the Weinstein Company new about Weinstein’s behavior, while she also started a petition to dissolve the company’s board. But McGowan’s most blistering tweets were directed at actor Ben Affleck, whom McGowan accused of knowing about Weinstein’s history of misconduct, including his alleged assault on her.
McGowan has previously said she was raped by a studio head, though she has never – and still hasn’t – named her attacker. However, as the New York Times reported, McGowan reached a $100,000 settlement with Weinstein in 1997 following an incident at a hotel room during the Sundance Film Festival. The settlement was reportedly “not to be construed as an admission” by Weinstein, but rather a way to avoid litigation.
A year before the settlement, McGowan starred in the horror classic Scream, which was released by Dimension Films, a subsidiary of The Weinstein Company. In 1998, she and Affleck co-starred in another Dimension film, Phantoms.
On Tuesday, Affleck – who has worked extensively with Weinstein over the years – posted a message on social media saying the reports about the film executive in The Times and The New Yorker “made [him] sick.” McGowan swiftly fired back, “Ben Affleck fuck off.” She then tweeted directly at the actor: “‘Goddammit! I told him to stop doing that’ you said that to my face. The press conf I was made to go to after assault. You lie.” (Both tweets are still on McGowan’s feed.)