Elon Musk’s X Temporarily Blocks Account of Alexey Navalny’s Widow from Platform
Yulia Navalnaya’s access to Elon Musk’s X social-media platform was temporarily restricted following her public accusations against Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding the death of her husband, opposition leader Alexey Navalny. In a video posted on her X account, Navalnaya accused Putin of being responsible for Navalny’s death in a Russian prison colony. She also declared her intention to assume the role of opposition leader following her husband’s passing.
On Tuesday, his profile page displayed an “account suspended” message and an explanation that the service freezes accounts that violate the platform’s rules. Soon after, the account reappeared online.
X said in a post on the site that Navalnaya’s account had been falsely flagged with a “defense mechanism against manipulation and spam.” The company said it planned to update the program and had unfrozen the account when it became aware of the error.
The account was flagged and suspended by X’s automated systems, then reinstated after a human review, a company spokesperson later confirmed. The account triggered several signals from X about spam: It was a new account created this month, had a significant increase in followers in a short period of time and was from a high-risk country, the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila, appealed to Putin to order the release of her son’s body, which has been kept hidden by authorities since his death on Friday at the IK-3 prison colony in the Arctic.
“I haven’t been able to see him for five days. They haven’t given me his body and haven’t even told me where he is,” he said in an online video posted Tuesday that was recorded in front of the prison. I appeal to you, Vladimir Putin, because the solution to this problem depends only about you. Let me finally see my son. I demand that Alexei’s body be released immediately so that I can bury him humanely.
