(Update: Twitter has removed the block on IStandWithPhil.com, apologized, and said the site was blocked “mistakenly.”)
Twitter has blocked people from tweeting IStandWithPhil.com, the name of a website created in support of “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson.
There are certain workarounds — you can still tweet “IStandWithPhildotCom,” as we have in our headline to escape Twitter’s censors — but those who type IStandWithPhil.com receive the message, “Oops! A URL in your Tweet appears to link to a page that has spammy or unsafe content.”
The group Faith Driven Consumer, which is behind the IStandWithPhil.com page, said a petition at the site has yielded 200,000 signatures in less than four days. It said Twitter has also shut down two other pro-Robertson social media accounts.
“Despite Twitter’s shut down of iStandWithPhil.com, we are surging through 200,000 supporters. In recent days, iStandWithPhil.com is among the top trending hash tags on Twitter,” said Chris Stone, founder of the group. “We’re encouraging supporters to be heard, Tweet the @support or @twitter account, and use their other means of communication to get iStandWithPhil.com back online.”
The group notes that a Google page diagnostic of the site indicates it “is not currently listed as suspicious” and that “this has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.”
Also read: ‘Duck Dynasty’ Pastor on What Phil Robertson Was Doing When He Was Suspended
The group is asking fans of free expression to send messages to @support or @twitter.
When it complained to Twitter, the group said, it received a boilerplate message saying Twitter “has systems that blocks [sic] the posting of suspected harmful URLs in order to make Twitter safer and more secure for our users. … Even if Google’s diagnostic report of the URL is clean, we may decide to continue blocking the URL on Twitter as potentially harmful.”
Here is the message:
Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment from TheWrap.
Tony Maglio contributed to this story.