【Watch How Young Sisters Share a Man Online】

When alt-right leader Richard Spencer's Twitter account was reinstated over the weekend after a month of suspension,Watch How Young Sisters Share a Man Online there was an outcry from critics who decried Spencer's rhetoric as being "hate speech" but Twitter, apparently, disagreed.

Instead, Twitter claimed that his suspension was about Spencer's use of multiple accounts. In a statement, the company said, "Our rules explicitly prohibit creating multiple accounts with overlapping uses. When we temporarily suspend multiple accounts for this violation, the account owner can designate one account for reinstatement."

The move to reinstate Spencer is only the most recent in Twitter's ongoing struggles with how to properly regulate its users and the content they post — a debate that has grown even more contentious after the election of Donald Trump.

When Spencer's account was initially suspended, a Twitter spokesperson told Mashable: "The Twitter Rules prohibit violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct, and multiple account abuse, and we will take action on accounts violating those policies."

When pressed on Sunday about Spencer's reinstatement, a Twitter spokesperson literally highlighted the "multiple account abuse" part of that statement, underscoring that as the reason for Spencer's suspension.

The case of Spencer's account(s) presents an interesting contrast to Twitter's permanent suspension in July of alt-right pundit and Breitbart Techeditor Milo Yiannopoulos.

Yiannopoulos' suspension was due to a targeted campaign of harassment toward actress Leslie Jones by his followers that stemmed from his scathing review of the Ghostbustersremake which was heavy on criticism for Jones. It even led to Jones temporarily leaving Twitter.

At the time, Twitter told Buzzfeed News:

People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. Over the past 48 hours in particular, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of Tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension.

The ban came after Twitter had given Yiannopoulos something of a warning months earlier when it removed his verification status. The ban hasn't kept him off of social media, as he's been active on Snapchat and Facebook, where he's verified. (Mashablehas reached out to Yiannopoulos for comment on Spencer's reinstatement.)

The difference between these two cases, at least to Twitter, apparently, is that Yiannopoulos was involved in targetedharassment of an individual person. Though Spencer's views are incendiary — the Southern Poverty Law Center considers his website, the National Policy Institute, a pillar of "academic racism" and during a recent appearance at Texas A&M, he said, "At the end of the day, America belongs to white men" — he hasn't incited harassment the same way Yiannopoulos did.

Yet the timing of Spencer's initial suspension led many to think that it was because he had violated the company's terms of "hateful conduct." At the same time that Spencer's multiple accounts were deleted, other leading alt-right voices like Pax Dickinson and John Rivers had their accounts suspended. Both those accounts remain suspended, but Rivers has since managed to launch another account that is currently active.

Even Spencer assumed this, as he posted a video shortly after the suspension that criticized Twitter, saying the bans happened at the hands of "execution squads" and calling it "corporate Stalinism." Even the title of the video, "The Knight of Long Knives," is a reference to a 1934 "purging" by Adolf Hitler of his own political party.

Spencer himself noted the differences between his suspension and that of Yiannopoulos, saying "Milo was engaging in something that could be called ‘harassment,'" though he added, "Again, I totally think he should have stayed.”

During an email exchange regarding Spencer's account, a Twitter spokesperson told Mashable, "We don't comment on individual accounts, for privacy and security reasons," so anything beyond the reasoning for Spencer's reinstatement is pure speculation.

Yet, it's still notable that Twitter so adamantly cites the "multiple account abuse" as the reason for Spencer's temporary suspension. His broader white nationalism views are part of the larger movement that has become more prominent on social media in the wake of Trump's rise and presidential victory.

Even if he hasn't specifically targeted a single person, his views target large swaths of the country's population, views that Twitter implicitly seems to say is okay for its platform by allowing him back onto its service.

In an email, Spencer told Mashable, "Twitter made the right call. I can’t say I have 100% confidence in the service as a free-speech platform. However, they are being quite reasonable in my case."  

It's, admittedly, a tough line for the company to walk, trying to stamp out trolling and abuse while simultaneously preserving its own ideals of "free speech."

But by reinstating Spencer, Twitter's inconsistent action on such accounts, especially given the context of Spencer's initial suspension, only gets more confusing. It's hard for users to understand Twitter's overall policy towards abuse and groups representing hateful views if the company itself can't even keep it straight.