Twitter has reinstated the account for markets blogging site Zero Hedge, and says its decision to suspend the account for “platform manipulation” earlier this year was a mistake, Bloomberg reported. The January suspension of its Twitter account followed a report from Zero Hedge suggesting that a Chinese scientist had created the coronavirus in a lab, a theory that has since been widely debunked.
Zero Hedge says in a post on its site Saturday that Twitter told them the suspension was for violating its rules against abuse and harassment, and reiterated its position that the suspension was “motivated by reasons other than the stated ones.” Its post argues Zero Hedge did not dox the scientist in question, but used publicly available information in its report.
In its January blog post, Zero Hedge included what it said were the scientist’s name, photo, email, and phone number, adding that people should “pay [him] a visit.” Twitter did not say what specifically led to Zero Hedge’s account being reinstated, but its rules prohibit revealing someone else’s personal information.
“We made an error in our enforcement action in this case,” a spokesperson for Twitter said in an email to The Verge on Saturday. “Based on additional context from the account holder in appeal, we have reinstated the account. We have a dedicated appeals process for all account holders.”
Zero Hedge’s Twitter account was previously wiped clean, but it appears many of its pre-suspension tweets are once again visible as of Saturday morning. Its follower count is currently over 700,000.
