A video of a passenger being “re-accommodated” from a united airlines flight set Twitter ablaze Monday morning. The company now scrambles to contain a flood of public outrage from netizens criticizing how David Dao, the passenger in the video, was forcibly removed from Flight 3411.

While it’s known that Twitter is a haven of outspoken individuals, some of its users are claiming that negative tweets targeting United Airlines have disappeared. The complaints popped out in the wake of the event, which makes matters worse for the American airline.

Twitter’s tricky interface apparently hid the tweets

Given most people are quick to jump to conclusions, it seems as though the complaints are unfounded, like in Jay Beecher’s case, whose Twitter profile says “Author of UKIP Exposed.” Beecher suggested that Twitter had removed a tweet critical of United Airlines, which was subsequently met by other users echoing the same issues.

However, a thorough tinkering of Beecher’s timeline shows the original tweet is still present, although it’s hidden under the “tweets and replies” tab, as it’s actually a response to another tweet. The same thing happened with @adirtyhippieee, whose tweet indicated #DeathOfTwitter, in reference to an alleged deleted tweet about airline monopolies and United Airlines.

Things escalated a few hours later, though, when @adirtyhippieee retracted his previous accusations. “#FalseAlarm. It wasn't deleted after. Just poor searching on my part. My #apologies to @Twitter,” the user wrote on Twitter.

A quick search on Beecher’s timeline, where he retweeted other users with similar complaints, shows the same results – their negative comments have been hidden under “tweets and replies” and are not censored or deleted.

United may be suing a parody website

Jeremy Cooperstock, the owner of the website untied.com, is apparently being sued by United Airlines. In an interview with Mashable, Cooperstock said he had compiled thousands of complaints against the airline since the ‘90s.

"It's no surprise that United would be the airline at the center of this event, given its part and parcel of United's philosophy that passengers are not human beings, even employees are not human beings," Cooperstock said.

The parody website has been around since 1997 and has amassed over 30,000 complaints against the airline. As to why he started the website, he said it was a response to United’s generic corporate responses when he filed a complaint many years back.

According to Cooperstock, United wants to remove the contact information of United employees the company says do not have jurisdiction over customer complaints, and it seeks to limit the site’s parody elements as well. United has not confirmed if indeed, it’s taking legal action over untied.com, and Twitter has not said anything about the deleted tweets either.

Meanwhile, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz apologized for the third time on Tuesday after the airline's stock plummeted in early trading.
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