Author and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson has been reinstated on Twitter after being banished from the platform last year.
The reinstatement comes after Berenson sued.
“The parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution. I have been reinstated. Twitter has acknowledged that my tweets should have not led to my suspension at that time,” Berenson said in a statement on his Substack.
“You know what it took Twitter to admit it shouldn’t have done what it did?” Berenson asked. “You do not, and I can’t tell you, because the statement is all I can say about the settlement.” He added that, “The settlement does not end my investigation into the pressures that the government may have placed on Twitter to suspend my account. I will have more to say on that issue in the near future.”
Berenson’s account had been permanently suspended from the platform due to “repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules,” a Twitter spokesperson noted last year, according to The Hill.
Billionaire business tycoon Elon Musk, who plans to purchase Twitter and transform it into a more free-speech friendly platform, responded to Berenson’s announcement on Wednesday by asking, “Can you say more about this: ‘… pressures that the government may have placed on Twitter …'”
Berenson replied, “I wish I could, @elonmusk, but the settlement with @Twitter prevents me from doing so. However, in the near future I hope and expect to have more to report.”
Journalist Andy Ngô responded to Berenson’s reinstatement announcement by commenting, “Thank you for not giving up. You are owed an apology for being silenced from the platform for this long.”
Many Americans have become fed up with the lack of free speech on Twitter as the company cracks down on certain types of speech, such as speech that deviates from the dogmas of radical leftist gender ideology or that strays from the mainstream narrative on COVID-19 vaccines.