Katie Hopkins, the conservative British commentator, who has been retweeted by the US President Donald Trump, has been banned from Twitter permanently. Hopkins’ removal of verified status soon followed by a permanent ban as Twitter says she broke the platform’s content rules.
“Keeping Twitter safe is a top priority for us – abuse and hateful conduct have no place on our service and we will continue to take action when our rules are broken. In this case, the account has been permanently suspended for violations of our Hateful Conduct policy,” said Twitter, announcing Hopkins’ ban.
Over 75,000 signed their name to a petition to get Hopkins banned from the platform.
With a follower-count north of one million, Hopkins’ Twitter account had managed to survive several waves of censorship takedowns that other political commentators hadn’t been so lucky to escape from.
Twitter chose not say which tweets Hopkins had posted that resulted in the ban but pointed to their rules surrounding comments “based on a wide range of personal characteristics such as race, gender or sexual orientation.”
The UK activist group “Center for Countering Digital Hate”, who this week conspired with NBC News in the attempted demonetization of The Federalist, had long been campaigning to get Hopkins removed from Twitter. They released the following statement after Hopkins’ ban: “We celebrate her losing her privileged platform but regret it took so long.”
