Twitter briefly suspended the account belonging to David Duke on Monday, after the former Ku Klux Klan leader traded insults with actor Chris Evans early last month.
While the suspension of Duke’s account was brief, it appears as though Twitter reset the white nationalist’s follower account. Duke had around 32,000 Twitter followers as of late February, and as of Monday his follower count had been reset to zero.
“I’m back,” Duke wrote in a tweet on Monday after his account was reinstated. “Though I have no idea why I was suspended. Thank you to all of the wonderful people who offered support.”
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/838807898637627396https://twitter.com/DrDavidDuke/status/838825543990657024https://twitter.com/DrDavidDuke/status/838827980629688321https://twitter.com/DrDavidDuke/status/838828184758009857
"We regularly review accounts and take action if they are found to have violated Twitter's rules," a Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider. "If an account is found to have been suspended in error, we immediately restore it and notify the owner of our mistake."
Duke, a Holocaust-denier and outspoken Trump supporter, is the latest in a string of far-right figures to be suspended from Twitter in recent months. Twitter suspended and later reinstated white nationalist Richard Spencer in December, and the social network permanently banned conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos last summer.
Duke got into a Twitter battle in early February with actor Chris Evans, who is best known for playing Captain America. Evans called out Duke's support of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to which Duke responded by calling Evans a "typical dumb actor."
https://twitter.com/ChrisEvans/status/829490363832283136https://twitter.com/DrDavidDuke/status/829517839316901888https://twitter.com/ChrisEvans/status/829766796928446464
Twitter has lately taken more steps to curb harassment and bullying on its platform, including temporarily throttling the reach of accounts it deems to be violating its rules. Last week the company announced that it was using algorithms to identify accounts engaging in abusive behavior.