Man banned from Twitter over mosquito death threat

Threatening mosquitoes on Twitter could get you banned from the platform

A Twitter user in Japan has been banned from using the social networking site for making a death threat against a mosquito.

Tweeting abuse would sometimes get you banned from the platform but Twitter's decision to ban user @nemuismywife has attracted ridicule on social media.

It started on 20 August when he was repeatedly bitten by a mosquito as he was watching TV.

After killing the mosquito, he tweeted: "Where do you get off biting me all over while I'm just trying to relax and watch TV? Die! (Actually you're already dead)." He added a picture of a dead insect to his tweet.

Some time later he received a message from Twitter saying his account had been frozen and cannot be reactivated.

He set up a new Twitter account, @DaydreamMatcha, to criticise Twitter's decision.

He tweeted: "My previous account was permanently frozen after I said I killed a mosquito. Is this a violation?"

His angry tweet was retweeted more than 31,000 times and liked more than 27,000 Twitter users:

Twitter has rolled out a number of new measures and tools to curb online abuse and harassment on its platform.

Some reports claimed the tweet was flagged by an automated programme and not by a human moderator.

US business magazine Fortune reported that Twitter launched an algorithm to detect abusive behaviour by looking and picking up key offensive words.