If that is accurate (I don't use twitter) then that certainly seems to be playing dirty if that was their intent.
Agreed, I don't know that I believe his explanation but I am not a Twitter software technician to be able to prove or disprove his claim. If Twitter really can unlock an account themselves I think they should put that in their next update.
A bit of a hyperbole but I know where you are going with it.
This was discussed in detail on several YT videos and webcasts. An additional facet to making the NY Post take down the original post destroys all the stats and interactions for that post.
Let's say the original story hit 1 million likes and 800K shares/retweets. Now they take it down. They put the exact same story up 2-4 days later. The stats start at zero. If they are lucky, they might get half the original numbers -- probably less. People look at the stats to see how popular it is. Higher numbers creates more interest. interest drives interactions, comments, and shares.
Speaking of comments, sometimes those are more important than the original post as visitors will add detail, opinions, and references to other sources that support or refute the story. If you like to do research on news articles, that's a great place to find leads. Removing the original post destroys the original story's comments. All those users' time and effort posting comments was wasted.
Yeah, Jack knows he could fix the original story if he really wanted to. He wants it taken down to prevent it from retaining all the "value" it generated. The Social Media companies do this all the time. You get placed in a penalty box -- rightly or wrongly -- and you miss the "interest peak." That story was trending all day yesterday. Today it's old news.