On June 18, 2021, Dave Portnoy’s Twitter account was briefly suspended. The name of the founder of media company Barstool Sports began trending on the social media platform as a result, with users sharing screenshots of the suspended account.
Portnoy posted about the suspension on his Instagram account, alongside a picture of himself with Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, tagging Dorsey and using the hashtag #FreePortnoy.
A few hours after the initial suspension, his account was back with Portnoy posting a tweet:
Twitter did not publicly give a reason for the suspension. The company simply acknowledged to Newsweek that the account had been restored. We also reached out to Twitter, but they refused to comment.
Portnoy has been at the center of controversies in the past, including defending racist jokes and threatening to fire employees over unionizing. But it remains unclear what content on his timeline prompted the June 2020 suspension.