Twitter is banning accounts for sharing everyone's new favourite meme

If you’ve seen a load of Baby Nut memes recently, you may be asking yourself why.

It all started earlier this year when 104-year-old Mr Peanut mascot of American snack-food company Planters died in a dramatic car crash.

But in a miraculous turn of events and during a new commercial during the Super Bowl on Sunday night, Mr Peanut was reborn in the form of Baby Nut – an eerily similar creature to The Mandalorian’s Baby Yoda that previously took social media by storm.

As soon as the ad aired, Baby Nut’s adorable face and top hat started filling up social media feeds across the world.

The Mr Peanut Twitter account, which changed its name to "Baby Nut", began tweeting GIFs, videos and adorable pics of its brand new ambassador.

But they also started retweeting Baby Nut meme accounts… and this is where it gets a bit tricky.

Among the meme accounts were @BabyNutBaby, @BabyNutMemes and @BabyNutLOL, which were all started before the Super Bowl reveal of Baby Nut even aired on Sunday night.

How, you ask? The meme accounts were all started by Planters itself.

It's unclear why, but many brands dream of a viral Twitter moment, something which could potentially be achieved by creating a buzz around new content.

Twitter’s spam and platform manipulation policy forbids:

Coordinated activity, that attempts to artificially influence conversations through the use of multiple accounts, fake accounts, automation and/or scripting.

And sure enough, Kraft Heinz told Insider that the three accounts had been suspended:

As we prepared to launch Baby Nut, we knew our fans would want as much content as they could get. After consulting with Twitter, we launched three meme-sharing accounts (@BabyNutBaby, @BabyNutMemes and @BabyNutLOL) in a fashion we believed was compliant with its terms of service. After we went forward, Twitter ultimately decided these accounts were noncompliant. We respect that decision.’

This begs the question: Are memes even sacred anymore?