Pete Evans appears to be the latest anti-vaccine and conspiracy figure to rejoin Twitter since Elon Musk bought it.
An account claiming to be Pete Evans was created on the platform on the same day that Musk’s purchase went through in late October. “Seems like a good day to join Twitter,” the user tweeted at the time.
The account has fewer than 100 followers and has tweeted only a handful of times, including retweeting Musk.
The account’s tweets have been reposted on Evan’s confirmed account on Telegram, strongly suggesting that it belongs to him. Evans did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While Evans did not previously have an account on Twitter, the disgraced celebrity chef had been banned from platforms Facebook and Instagram for sharing COVID-19 misinformation. This came not long after he was dumped from his television hosting gig and from other business deals for sharing a neo-Nazi symbol online.
Since being taken down from Meta’s platforms, Evans’ online audience has shrunk from nearly 2 million followers to fewer than 55,000.
Evans joins a list of misinformation superspreaders and extremists who’ve flocked to the platform since Musk took over. So far, Musk has overseen an “amnesty” policy change that reinstated suspended accounts that were sanctioned for reasons other than illegal activity or egregious spam — a decision that was criticised by online trust and safety experts.
Returning accounts included Andrew Tate, who had been suspended for hate speech; Kanye West, who had been suspended for anti-Semitism (and has been subsequently banned again); Jordan Peterson, who was banned for Twitter’s policy on harassment for referring to actor Elliot Page by his former name.
Anti-vaxxers also celebrated the return of Dr Peter McCullough and Dr Robert Malone, two doctors suspended for spreading COVID misinformation.
But even before Musk’s policy changes, far-right extremists flocked back to the platform in anticipation of his regime. In turn, researchers have seen an “unprecedented” rise of hate speech on the platform, including a 500% increase of the N-word of Twitter soon after Musk took over.
