Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, briefly suspended the account of Alexei Navalny’s widow just one day after she launched it as part of an announcement that she will continue her late husband’s work.
Yulia Navalnaya had said Monday that she planned to “continue the fight” for Russia following Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison, which she blamed on President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin killed not just the man Alexei Navalny, he wanted to kill our hope, our freedom, our future,” she said in a video statement posted on YouTube and X.
To accompany her announcement, the widow created an account on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, garnering nearly 100,000 followers in less than a day.
The independent news website Mediazona reported that the account was subject to a “shadow ban” — which limits the traction, engagement, and visibility of posts without letting the user know — just hours after it was created.
However, by Tuesday afternoon, the account was suspended altogether for allegedly “violating X rules,” though it was not clear what rules exactly Navalnaya's account had broken.
The account was restored within roughly one hour.
“Our platform's defense mechanism against manipulation and spam mistakenly flagged @yulia_navalnaya as violating our rules. We unsuspended the account as soon as we became aware of the error, and will be updating the defense,” the platform's Safety service said later Tuesday.
