Musk Twitter takeover: The banned Scottish accounts who could make their return

The famous billionaire claims that Twitter needs to be “politically neutral” which he says “means upsetting the far right and the far left equally”.

With that in mind, let’s have a look at some of the banned profiles who might make it back onto the platform following the tech giant's takeover.

Wings Over Scotland (WOS)

WOS, real name Stuart Campbell, came to prominence as a Yes campaigner and author of the Wee Blue Book.

He was a prominent voice in the run-up to the 2014 independence referendum before he was banned from the site for "supposed hateful conduct".

In December 2019, Campbell waded into a spat between journalists Helen Lewis and Louis Staples. Staples accused Lewis of using an analysis piece to link Labour's poor electoral performance with the then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s policies towards trans people. 

Campbell entered the row by tweeting: “Sounds like you’re a c*** tbh”.

WOS argued that there was no ban on swearing on the platform and that his tweet did not mention any particular group. However, he was banned on the grounds of hateful conduct.

Speaking to The Scottish Sun, Campbell said: "That's entirely false. No other tweets were mentioned by Twitter - my account is regularly reported for malicious reasons, usually by trans-rights activists, but has always been found not to have violated any policies.”

Stuart Campbell

Silvio Tattisconie

This high-profile Twitter troll was banned in October last year for attacking Scottish poet Len Pennie who would post a Scots word of the day along with a video of her own verse.

Known online as Miss PunniePennie, Pennie was subjected to a hate campaign following her appearance at Transpoesie 21, an EU-funded poetry event to celebrate linguistic diversity.

Hiding behind their anonymous nom de plume, Tattisconie used a misogynistic slur and attacked Pennie for publicly discussing her struggle with anxiety and depression.

He wrote: “Ohhh it’s my mental health, I get anxious, I can’t sleep, I’ve no one to talk to. Bulls***,”

He then called Pennie an “attention-seeking whore”.

Tattisconie, who had previously been retweeted by Donald Trump, was subsequently banned from the platform.

READ MORE: Five awful Tory laws MPs hope you'll forget now the term's over

Donald Trump

The former US president’s account was banned from Twitter for repeated violations of the site's rules. The final straw for the Republican came two days after the riot on Capitol Hill with Twitter citing a risk of “further incitement of violence” for his removal from the platform.

Following his ban, Trump said he didn’t intend to return to Twitter, preferring to stick with his rival social media site Truth Social.

It remains to be seen if Musk’s takeover would be enough to tempt the former president back to Twitter.

Katie Hopkins

Hopkins had her profile suspended in June 2020 after a string of far-right tweets caused widespread offence. One of those compared migrants to cockroaches while another claimed that a picture of a dead Syrian child on a beach had been staged.

In their statement on Hopkins’s ban, the social media site said that she had been removed from the site to “keep Twitter safe” and that “abuse and hateful conduct have no place on our service and we will continue to take action when our rules are broken”.

David Duke

The former leader of the Klu Klux Klan had his account banned from Twitter in 2020 for repeatedly breaching the site’s rules on hateful conduct. Duke’s account was suspended more than ten years after he first activated his account and more than eight years after he started regularly tweeting in 2012.