Instagram has reinstated Tommy Robinson’s account and said it was deleted in error, amid a growing debate on whether far-right activists should continue to have their content hosted by major social media companies.

Robinson had held up the suspension of his account on the Facebook-owned photo-sharing service as evidence that major corporations were censoring his output. The suspension came the day after most major social media platforms decided to ban the US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his InfoWars site from their networks.

“They have now deleted my Instagram account. Facebook will soon close us down,” Robinson, who has just been released from prison, told his Facebook followers.

He also posted a mobile phone screengrab showing an Instagram page in the name of “realtommyrobinson”, with a banner message saying: “User not found.”

However, Instagram reinstated the account on Tuesday afternoon after concluding it did not breach its guidelines. A spokesperson for the company said: “The account @realtommyrobinson was removed in error and has since been reactivated.”

The account was reported by a member of the public for violating Instagram’s community guidelines regarding bullying. One of Instagram’s moderation team decided it broke the rules and suspended the account, unwittingly putting themselves in the middle of a major culture clash over the limits of free speech.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, led a protest in central London in May after he was banned from Twitter for breaching the site’s rules on hateful content. However, he remains active on Facebook and other major social media platforms, and benefits from cheerleaders elsewhere in the media.

Instagram’s decision to reinstate his account will focus further attention on whether the likes of Facebook and Google-owned YouTube are happy to distribute Robinson’s anti-Islam material and where they draw the line on hate speech – especially after the decision to ban Jones and InfoWars.

Earlier this year, Facebook removed the official page of the far-right group Britain First, as well as those of its leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, in what the social network said was a response to repeated violations of its rules.

Robinson is an intermittent user of Instagram and has posted 47 times. His uploads include pictures of him filming interviews with other far-right activists, photos of his children, and one of him at a Luton Town football match with the co-founder of Vice magazine.

He was freed from prison last Wednesday after three judges in London quashed a contempt of court finding made against him at Leeds crown court in May. They granted him conditional bail from a 13-month jail sentence, pending new proceedings at the Old Bailey.

He had been held at Onley jail near Rugby after receiving a 13-month sentence for breaching reporting restrictions at Leeds and Canterbury crown courts by broadcasting a Facebook live stream in which he taunted defendants entering court.

There is a chance that he could again be jailed over the allegations.

After founding the English Defence League, an anti-Islam movement, in 2009, Robinson has in recent years again become a figurehead for Britain’s far right. His videos on Facebook and YouTube have been watched millions of times and more than 630,000 people signed an online petition calling for his freedom that was translated into French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Polish, Czech and Russian.

The Middle East Forum, a rightwing American thinktank, said it spent a five-figure sum on Robinson’s defence. A number of other rightwing groups were also said to have contributed.