‘Incitement to violence’ leads to suspension of Ye’s Twitter account again
Ye has been suspended from Twitter again – this time by the social platform’s new CEO, Elon Musk.
The rapper, formerly known as Kanye West, was first locked out of Twitter in October after publishing antisemitic tweets. Musk took over the platform later in October. In early November, Ye was reinstated.
On Friday, the Tesla founder suspended Ye’s account again, saying he “violated” the platform’s rules.
“He again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended,” Musk tweeted Friday in response to a user asking him to “fix Kanye.”
Earlier in the day, Ye tweeted a series of antisemitic posts after making several antisemitic comments during an interview with Alex Jones.
Several businesses have cut ties with Ye, including Adidas, Gap and Balenciaga, the fashion brand for which he walked the runway during Paris Fashion Week.
Musk took over Twitter on Oct. 27 with an emphasis on free speech. The billionaire business mogul, who is also the CEO of Space X, promised to loosen the platform’s content restrictions. Since his takeover, Twitter has reinstated several accounts that have been locked for violating Twitter’s earlier rules, including the account of former President Donald Trump.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement in October.
But one study revealed a spike in hate speech on Twitter since Musk took over the platform. The study by Montclair State University tracked how often homophobic, antisemitic and racial-hate-driven terms were used immediately after Musk became owner of the company.
Researchers for the study found that about 398 hate tweets an hour were made in the 12 hours after the acquisition was finalized – a number nearly quadruple the 84 tweets an hour in the week leading up to Musk’s takeover. Hate-driven tweets skyrocketed to 4,778 times over that span compared with the average 1,000 beforehand.