A prominent Twitter user is speaking out after he was suspended by the social media platform for tweeting, “Ok dude…” during a spat with an antifa activist who was later revealed to be transgender.
Rapper Zuby, who shot to internet fame after tweeting a video last year in which he claimed he was identifying as a woman in order to “destroy” the British women’s deadlifting record, was suspended by Twitter on Tuesday for tweeting, “Ok dude…” after the transgender activist account “Pronouns Enforcer” mocked his sexual prowess.
“I got an email from Twitter saying I was locked out of my account for violating their hateful conduct policy,” said Zuby in a conversation with the Washington Examiner on Thursday. “I was obviously bewildered, and I scrolled down to see what this supposed tweet that violates their hateful conduct policy was, and it just said, ‘Ok, dude,’ and that was that.”
The row began after Zuby posted a tweet giving “advice for women” on “how to land a great guy” that went viral last week. The account “Pronouns Enforcer” responded to the tweet, saying, “I’m like 95% sure that I sleep with more women with you and this is terrible advice.” Zuby replied to the comment by writing, “Ok dude…,” which he said was meant to casually dismiss the belittling of his sexual abilities.
“It wasn’t even a gendered statement, not that it should even matter,” Zuby said. “I used it as a synonym for like, ‘Yeah, whatever.’ I didn’t go and research the person I was responding too. Perhaps I should have because they’re an antifa activist who spends their time trying to doxx people and get people kicked off platforms that they don’t like.”
A week after the back-and-forth, Twitter suspended Zuby for hateful conduct and gave him two options: appeal the ruling or remove the content.
“I could either delete the tweet and my account would be reinstated after 12 hours, or if I thought they made a mistake, I could appeal, so I decided to appeal” Zuby added. “This morning, I found that the appeal had been rejected and the only course of action from then was to delete the tweet in question. There was no other option.”
Zuby, who says he receives “regular” abuse in the form of racism on Twitter’s platform, claimed he is very careful to abide by the platform’s terms of services because he knows small infractions can get his account banned. Meanwhile, “Pronouns Enforcer” tweeted, “F— off twat” in Zuby’s absence and spent the better part of Thursday railing about Nazis.
Several Twitter users pointed to instances in which “Pronouns Enforcer” calling people “dude” on many occasions on the social media platform. The account has also used violent rhetoric to attack other users, including one tweet which read: “I now call all antifa groups to consider the TERF (Trans-exclusionary radical feminist) movement to be properly considered to be a white supremacist movement and treated like the Nazi platform that they are. No one gets left behind.”
Zuby’s suspension comes amid several high-profile conservatives being banned from the platform for allegedly abusing Twitter’s terms of services. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for more information.
