Netizens have accused Twitter of double standards, reacting angrily to a resurfaced tweet by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from May 2017 and containing claims the 2016 US presidential election "was hijacked".
The tweet was posted in the run-up to Robert Mueller's appointment as special counsel to investigate allegations of collusion between Russian officials and the Trump campaign in 2016. The probe found insufficient evidence to substantiate such collusion.
Many Twitter users questioned the social media platform's consistency, arguing that Pelosi's tweet "incites violence", something used by Twitter as a pretext to permanently suspend US President Donald Trump's personal account last week.
"Seems to be a double standard with what is allowed on Twitter", one user noted, while another netizen described the situation as "hypocrisy at it's finest".
Last Friday, Twitter expressed concern that allowing Trump to return to the platform after a temporary suspension risked "further incitement of violence", in the wake of the 6 January events, when POTUS supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington, trying to prevent certification of the 3 November presidential election results.
Shortly thereafter, Trump tweeted from the US president's official @POTUS account that he would "look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the future".