Taylor Swift returns to social media with cryptic video

Taylor Swift's social media accounts were spitting out content again on Monday, three days after they appeared to be wiped clean.

The singer's feeds went dark on the three-year anniversary of the release of her Shake It Off single from her last album 1989, leading fans to speculate she's getting ready to release new music.

Swift's Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook accounts resumed activity with one mysterious posting around 11 a.m. ET. Fans soon began identifying it as either the tip of a dragon's tail, or a snake's tail.

The cryptic video is generating buzz that she's fighting back against a mean-spirited trend of snake emojis appearing next to her Instagram photos, and/or that she's just embracing the vitriol and using it for publicity.

The mojis began appearing last year after her ex-boyfriend, Scottish record producer Calvin Harris, criticized the American pop star on Twitter in the wake of their breakup, accusing her of trying to make him "look bad" after she confirmed she helped write his hit song This is What You Came For.

• Taylor Swift testifies: 'It was a definite grab. A very long grab.'

Instagram took action in June to remove blocks of offending emojis as it introduced new filters to block "certain offensive comments" and spam.

The following month, anyone who tried to post a lot of snake emojis on Swift's Instagram feed would get an error message about using too many special characters.