As the youth wing of the public broadcaster, triple j has been historically known to push the boundaries. But even still, Twitter’s recent decision to ban one of its accounts was a bit much.
triple j runs the triple j Plays Twitter account, which tweets out every song that’s played on its radio station. It’s very handy for when you’ve heard something on the radio and missed the song’s title and artist when it’s back announced by a show host.
Beethoven – Symphony No. 5 in C minor: I. Allegro con brio [10:05]
— triple j Plays (@triplejplays) May 26, 2020
But the normally profligate account has been dormant for more than a week. And its fans have posted to social media to complain about its absence.
Oh no @triplejplays died 🙁
— phil (@Superchair14) November 13, 2020
So what was the reason for the sudden silencing? It’s because it tweeted a song by Kanye West (also a big Twitter fan), according to one of the stations’ hosts.
On Tuesday night, the host of the station’s heavy music show THE RACKET Lochlan Watt tweeted that the account had been temporarily banned for one of its tweets.
“Hilarious to me that @triplejplays got temporarily banned from twitter for the content of a song title and it wasn’t something I had played. I would have thought Dead Kelly’s ‘Fuck Off Cunt’ might have done it the other month if something was going to, but nope,” he tweeted via the show’s Twitter account.
When asked by a listener, Watt revealed the offending song was Kanye West’s 2013 classic Black Skinhead, from the album Yeezus. Wisely, he decided to just link to a YouTube version of the song rather than tweeting it and facing a ban himself.
And it’s not even the first time that it’s happened, according to Watt. “Second time it’s happened to (sic) apparently lol”, he tweeted a little bit later on.
Second time it’s happened to apparently lol
— THE RACKET (@triplejracket) November 17, 2020
We’re sure it can’t be too long before the triple J Plays’ Twitter account is back, tweeting and favouriting tweets about Tamagotchis.
Triple J’s playlist account has faved exactly one thing:
a foreign language tweet from a store about their Tamagotchi range pic.twitter.com/PkijfUUczT
— postmaster-general cameron wilson (@cameronwilson) November 18, 2020