By Elise Brisco. Media: USA Today.
Elon Musk suspends Ye’s Twitter account for violating ‘incitement to violence’ rule
Kanye West has been suspended from Twitter again after antisemitic posts, following antisemitic comments during an interview with Alex Jones. Damien Henderson, Getty Images.
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.
President Joe Biden countered the antisemitic things Ye said the day before in a Friday tweet to “make a few things clear.”
Biden continued: “The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides. Silence is complicity.”
I just want to make a few things clear:
The Holocaust happened.
Hitler was a demonic figure.
And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides.
Silence is complicity.
— President Biden (@POTUS) December 2, 2022
After Ye’s interview with Jones, Parler, a social media app Ye planned to purchase, announced it has canceled plans to sell the conservative platform to Ye by mutual agreement.
The deal would have given Ye his own personal megaphone and a voice in how speech on social media is moderated. Ye said he would use Parler to make sure conservative viewpoints could be freely expressed.
Ye has faced months of backlash since his initial tweet. Several businesses have cut ties with him, including Adidas, Gap and Balenciaga, the fashion brand for which he walked the runway during Paris Fashion Week.
Kim Kardashian, his ex-wife, with whom he settled a divorce on Tuesday, responded to Ye’s tweets on Oct. 24, saying on Twitter, “I stand together with the Jewish community and call on the terrible violence and hateful rhetoric towards them to come to an immediate end.”
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 quadrupled from 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.
Contributing: Scott Gleeson