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Twitter locks Kanye West out of his account following anti-Semitic post

Twitter locks Kanye West out of his account following anti-Semitic post

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Ye returned to Twitter after his Instagram account was restricted

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Kanye West wearing a black hat and a hoodie
Ye’s Twitter account is locked after he violated that platform’s policies.
Photo by Edward Berthelot/GC Images

Twitter confirmed that it locked Kanye West, who now goes by “Ye,” out of his account after he posted an anti-Semitic tweet on Saturday (via BuzzFeed News). “The account in question has been locked due to a violation of Twitter’s policies,” Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough said in a statement to The Verge.

Twitter has since removed Ye’s tweet, but several users screenshotted the post before Twitter took it down. “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” Ye wrote. “The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”

Ye, who hasn’t been active on Twitter in about two years, was greeted by Elon Musk once he returned to the platform. He posted the hateful tweet shortly after Instagram restricted access to his account, prompting him to call out Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for “kick[ing] him off Instagram.”

On Friday, Ye posted a screenshot on Instagram showing a text message between him and rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, accusing Diddy of being controlled by Jewish people. This garnered a response from the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which slammed Ye for espousing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

It’s unclear how long Ye won’t have access to his Twitter account, as the platform’s rules say it could place a user’s profile in “read-only mode” for anywhere from 12 hours to seven days depending on the violation. This means that Ye can’t tweet, retweet, or like any posts until the lockout lifts, but other users can still interact with his content.

These two hateful outbursts come not even a week after Ye was captured wearing a racist “White Lives Matter” shirt, a phrase the Anti-Defamation League classifies as a hate slogan. Ye also appeared on Fox News in an interview with Tucker Carlson that the AJC says was “laden with racist and antisemitic undertones.”