Just two months after being restored, Kanye West’s account was suspended once more by Twitter Inc.
On Friday its owner, Elon Musk, claimed he had broken the terms of service banning encouragement to violence.
In October, Musk, who identifies as an ardent supporter of free expression, had warmly invited the rapper, now going by the name Ye, back to the stage. “I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended,” Musk tweeted late on Thursday.
Ye tweeted an unflattering image of Elon Musk showering on a yacht with the caption, “I just found out I’d be banned for it.” Let’s always remember this as my final tweet,” to which Musk replied, “This is fine.” You can see the short exchange, together with the (now invisible) tweet from Ye, in the image below.
Ye’s account was suspended for inciting violence, not for uploading the image of Musk, Musk later explained. “Just to be clear, it’s not a picture of me getting hosed by Ari that has his account suspended; it’s for inciting violence. Sincerely, I received that inspiration for weight loss in those pictures ” he tweeted.
As a result of his comments that appeared to support the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, former President Donald Trump was suspended from Twitter under the social media platform’s policy against inciting violence.
Ye’s suspension comes after a wave of accounts that had been previously suspended were allowed to return, including those of Donald Trump, Kathy Griffin, Jordan Peterson, Babylon Bee, and Ye himself, who had been suspended earlier for tweeting antisemitic remarks. Musk at first said there would be no account reinstatements prior to the formation of a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints,” but after a Twitter poll, he went ahead and restored Trump’s account.