Unplanned Doubles Box Office Expectations, Twitter Explains Why Unplanned Account Was Suspended

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By Aliya Kuykendall, The Stream, April 1, 2019

Aliya KuykendallUnplannedhad a good — in fact, surprisingly successful — first weekend. The movie shows the reality of abortion as it tells the true story of Abby Johnson, a Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life advocate. The pro-life movie made 6.1 million in box office sales this weekend. That’s more than double what movie industry forecasters were projecting.

Unplanned tweeted that they’re seeing theaters sell out. What’s more, they’re planning to add 700 new theaters this week.

Opening weekend came with some headache too, as Unplanned saw its official Twitter account suspended, then reinstated after an outcry. Twitter notified @UnplannedMovie that it would take about an hour for their follower numbers to repopulate.

View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter

UnplannedMovie@UnplannedMovie

People are once again experiencing @Twitter shenanigans…
We finally got a response as to our suspension. reactionhttp://Unplannedmovie.com 

5,311 people are talking about this

But “an hour or so” wasn’t the case. Users reported trouble following the account. By Monday morning Abby Johnson tweeted that she couldn’t follow her own movie.

Abby Johnson@AbbyJohnson

Irony…I can’t even follow the @Twitter account for my own film. It keeps kicking me off. @UnplannedMovie

1,155 people are talking about this

Many users had reported the same thing: As soon as they refreshed the page, their following status was back to not following. Some posted videos of this happening.

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Richard Grenell

@RichardGrenell

What is going on @jack? This is outrageous.

13.6K people are talking about this

By Monday afternoon it seems like everything is back to the way it should be on the Unplanned account. Except that it still doesn’t have a blue verified check mark. The Unplanned account made a chant (that rhymes) to protest:

UnplannedMovie@UnplannedMovie

RT and chant with us:

Verify ! Censorship should be banned!

Anna Khait

@Annakhait

Censoring @UnplannedMovie twitter page has backfired, as always 🤣. @jack – when will you verify them? I could have sworn you just did a podcast with @joerogan about how unbiased Twitter is….. #UnplannedTheMovie https://twitter.com/_ashleybratcher/status/1112553590143492096 

4,649 people are talking about this

Twitter’s Response

So what’s the official Twitter explanation for all of this?

A Twitter spokesperson told the Daily Dot (with a straight face) the suspension “wasn’t directly about this account. When an account violates the Twitter Rules, the system looks for linked accounts to mitigate things like ban evasion. In this case, the account was mistakenly caught in our automated systems for ban evasion.”

The spokesperson declined to explain what that other account was, which Unplanned was mistakenly connected with.


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Interestingly, along with all the trouble with the account’s suspension and followers, it seems Twitter has decided the Unplannedbanner, once shared, constitutes media that “may be sensitive” and has to be covered up unless you click “view.” Here’s a couple screenshots of such a tweet:

banner 1

banner 2

Regardless of how the movie account is faring on Twitter, we can rejoice that it’s doing well in box offices, and impacting hearts with the reality of abortion and the truths of transformation and forgiveness.

Oh, and turns out the account is doing pretty well on Twitter now too:

Abby Johnson@AbbyJohnson

Look who we just passed in followers. 😁

5,880 people are talking about this

See here for Dr. Michael Brown’s piece “My Uncontrollable Sobbing While Watching Unplanned Scared My Wife” and his experience this weekend at a theater, called “ first experience seeing the movie and “So Much Evil, Mommy. Those Poor Babies.” this weekend.

Also, please check out Jason Scott Jones’ “Unplanned: The Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the Abortion Issue.”