August 2nd 2023.
After an 8-month ban, Kanye West is back on Twitter. The ban was due to West making threats against Jewish people and posting an image of the Star of David with a swastika inside it, which violated a policy prohibiting the active incitement of violence. Although West is now back on the platform, he is not eligible to take advantage of monetization or ad-sharing, which usually come with a gold checkmark.
The decision to reinstate West's account was met with condemnation from several organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, tweeted out his displeasure on June 29 “Absolutely sickening that antisemite Kanye West was unsuspended from Twitter/X and given a gold verification check mark. He’s done absolutely nothing to make amends.” Greenblatt also highlighted the increasing presence of right-wing/extremist accounts on Twitter and asked the platform why it allows flagrant anti-Semitism on its platform.
Avital Grinberg from the European Union of Jewish Students expressed her frustration with Twitter's inaction to a Guardian reporter: "All our efforts and advocacy have led nowhere and Twitter has become a space where antisemitism and Holocaust denial is just growing and growing. This is so much bigger than us, so we needed the biggest and strongest tool that democracy has to offer and that is the law.”
This incident is indicative of Twitter's seeming lack of interest in curtailing extremist views on its platform. In January 2023, a series of tweets were reported to the platform by HateAid and the European Union of Jewish Students. However, Twitter failed to take down the tweets, which were in obvious violation of their own guidelines. It wasn't until the platform was threatened with a lawsuit that the tweets were finally taken down.
Kanye West has yet to make any tweets since his profile was reactivated. Nevertheless, the controversy surrounding his return to Twitter is a reminder of the platform's failure to take a stance against hate-speech.
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