Twitter has suspended an account with thousands of followers for violating its policy against "fake and misleading accounts," after it posted a brief clip of the now-notorious encounter between a Native American elder and several high school students wearing Make America Great Again hats.
The @2020fight account, which had more than 40,000 followers before it went offline, shared a minute-long video of the incident between Nathan Phillips, a Native American veteran, and protestors from Covington Catholic High School at the Indigenous Peoples March last week. The video sparked an outcry on Twitter, with many users calling the students racist and pushing for their personal information to be leaked online. The clip shared by @2020fight was retweeted more than 14,000 times and racked up 2.5 million views.
The account was suspended on Monday afternoon, however, after
CNN Business noticed the account was not authentic. The account had a profile picture of a Brazil-based blogger, despite claiming to be run by a California schoolteacher named Talia. A Twitter spokesperson, after confirming the account had been suspended, did not tell TheWrap how long the account would be offline.
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