Kanye West's (aka ye) Twitter Account Is Active Again

At the time of Elon Musk‘s takeover of Twitter, one of the platform’s new owner’s stated reasons for buying Twitter was his fondness for free speech. (How that’s played out in reality is another story.) In December 2022, Twitter faced an especially high-profile case that put that ethos to the test – and it involved a musician, fashion mogul and one-time presidential candidate.

That would be Kanye West, aka ye, who posted an image containing a swastika to his account. And the response involved disabling ye’s Twitter account, citing the post as an incitement to violence. Now, in the waning days of July 2023, West’s Twitter account is active again — though as of this writing, he hasn’t posted anything new to it. Currently, the latest posts on his account are from December 1, 2022.

The Guardian‘s Mattha Busby has more details on the reinstatement of ye’s Twitter account. Citing a report in The Wall Street Journal, Busby writes that ye’s account will not be able to make use of Twitter’s monetization program. (It’s not hard to see that the account might not meet the “have not repeatedly violated the Twitter User Agreement” standard for monetized accounts, for one thing.) According to The Guardian, ye has also pledged to avoid hate speech on Twitter.

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As of this writing, ye’s Twitter account (or, if you prefer, X) has 31.6 million followers — which suggests that, if nothing else, plenty of people will be listening when he does return to posting there.