Katie Hopkins permanently banned from Twitter over 'hateful content'
Controversial right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins has been permanently suspended from Twitter.
The former Apprentice star, who had more than one million followers on the site, had her account taken down for breaking Twitter's rules around hate speech.
Ms Hopkins has been suspended numerous times before over violating the social media site's rules, most recently in January.
While Twitter did not state which tweets had caused the most-recent ban, it did come after remarks made to Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford.
Mr Rashford recently forced the Government into a u-turn on its plans to stop paying for free school meals during the pandemic.
Ms Hopkins tweeted at the footballer saying that women should “think about how they are going to feed a child before they decide to have it”.
Twitter said Ms Hopkins’ account had been shut down for breaching its rules on hateful content.
“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,” the company said.
“In this case the account has been permanently suspended for violations of our hateful conduct policy.”
Twitter’s policy states that users are not allowed to “promote violence or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease”.
Ms Hopkins previously compared migrants to cockroaches on the site and alleged that a photo of a dead Syrian boy lying on a beach was fake.
President Donald Trump has previously endorsed Ms Hopkins, saying that she was a “respected columnist” and praising her for her “powerful writing on the UK’s Muslim problems”.
The US president himself has fallen foul of Twitter’s policies around glorifying violence. Tweets from both his own and the official White House account were hidden labelled with warnings.
Mr Trump had tweeted in reference to the riots in Minneapolis that followed the death of George Floyd in police custody. The president said: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
