Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, is back on X, formerly known as Twitter, despite being banned twice already.
West’s profile has been reactivated, though he has yet to tweet and his tweet history has been scrubbed, either by himself or by the platform. According to CNN, “West will not be able to monetize his account, and no ads will appear next to his posts, the company told the Wall Street Journal on Saturday.”
West was banned in October last year over antisemitic comments, though his account was reinstated a few weeks later. Just two months after his first ban, West tweeted a picture of a Star of David with a Swastika inside, and, even with Musk’s ‘tolerance,’ he was once again banned.
Elon later tweeted, “I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence.” (Musk also responded to West having posted pictures of the Twitter owner shortly before the ban, writing “Just clarifying that his account is being suspended for incitement to violence, not an unflattering pic of me being hosed by Ari [Emanuel].” Convincing.)
West’s virtual rise from the dead follows Musk’s plan to not have anyone permanently removed from X due to his love affair with free speech. He has said previously that Twitter would “be very reluctant to delete things” and “be very cautious with permanent bans.”
In April, the platform contradicted itself with its new “philosophy” called ‘Freedom of Speech, not Freedom of Reach’ which would basically allow people to be horrendous human beings without much consequence.
The company said, “We believe Twitter users have the right to express their opinions and ideas without fear of censorship. We also believe it is our responsibility to keep users on our platform safe from content violating our Rules.”
They go on to say that instead of removing content that violates their policies, they will instead restrict what users see, and will be able to see a message that reads, “Visibility limited; this tweet may violate Twitter’s rules against hateful content.”
After already losing brand deals and having his public image damaged even further, you would hope Ye would maybe learn his lesson. But we suppose we’ll have to wait and see if he tweets again.
(featured image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
