Twitter Locks Katherine Deves’ Account For Hateful Conduct

Twitter reportedly locked former Liberal candidate Katherine Deves’ account for violating the social media platform’s “hateful conduct rule”.

Trigger Warning: This story discusses anti-LGBTQI views, which might be distressing to some readers. For 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention call Lifeline on 13 11 14. For Australia-wide LGBTQI peer support call QLife on 1800 184 527 or webchat.

Deves, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s “captain’s pick” candidate for Warringah, had during the federal election campaign last year, apologised for posting anti-trans and anti-LGBTQI statements. She had wiped her Twitter account clean of her personal views on the LGBTQI community. 

After losing the elections, Deves doubled down on her views and has continued to post statements against the LGBTQI community, especially the transgender community, and Pride events. 

Deves Says She Would Never Again Apologise For Her Anti-LGBTQI Views

@insightSBS katherine deves' twitter account is so hateful that twitter locked it and made her delete tweets. Insight giving a platform to this hateful person is a disgrace. pic.twitter.com/rL1AhIph63

— Helen Murti 🐢 #RaiseTheRate (@HMMurti) February 21, 2023

Earlier this week, Deves told SBS Insights that she would never again apologise for her anti-LGBTQI views if given another chance.

“It didn’t assuage the people who were coming after me so I think it’s better to simply, never justify, never explain, never apologise. Just continue on,” Deves told Insight.

And, continue on is what Deves has done on social media in the past year. Some of her recent posts, which were reported by multiple people, are what have put her in the dock this time.

“We locked Katherine Deves’ account for breaking our hateful conduct rule,” Twitter notified social media users who had reported her post. “We found they broke our hateful conduct rule through different reports we received about their behavior. 

A History Of Anti-LGBTQI Views

Twitter revealed that Deves would not be able to tweet, retweet or like the content. “We’ll ask them to remove the reported content if they want to regain full access to their account,” Twitter said, adding, “Your safety is important to us. If they break our rules again, we’ll respond with a more severe action, like suspension.”

At press time, Deves has started to posting again on Twitter, after appearing to have deleted some of the posts that had been reported. She has not addressed the issue of being locked down by Twitter. Many of her anti-LGBTQI tweets continue to remain on her feed.

Before the elections, Deves deleted tweets where she had described surrogacy for gay couples as “a human rights violation” and “a vanity project”.

In social media posts as well as blogs on her website, Deves falsely claimed that trans children were “surgically mutilated”, compared support for trans children to the “stolen generation” and likened her opposition to what she called “gender ideology” to the anti-Nazi resistance.