Elon Musk restored Donald Trump’s account on Twitter on Saturday (US time), reversing a ban that had kept the former president of the social media site as a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Attacked because Congress was ready to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.
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Musk made the announcement after conducting a poll earlier in the evening, asking Twitter users to click ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to restore Trump’s account. The ‘yes’ vote won with 51.8 percent.
‘The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox populi, vox Dei,” Musk tweeted using the Latin phrase, which means ‘voice of the people, the voice of God.
Shortly afterward Trump’s account, which had previously appeared as suspended, reappeared on the platform along with his former tweets, more than 59,000 of them. However, his followers were gone, at least initially.
As of 3.15 p.m. (AEDT), he had 844,000 followers and his account showed he had started following 49 other people.
It’s unclear whether Trump will actually return to Twitter. An inveterate tweeter before being banned, Trump has said in the past that he would not rejoin even if his account was reinstated. He has been relying on his own, much smaller social media site, Truth Social, which he launched after being blocked from Twitter.
And on Saturday, during a video speech at a meeting of a Republican Jewish group in Las Vegas, Trump said he was aware of Musk’s election but saw a lot of problems on Twitter,’ according to Bloomberg.
‘I hear we’re getting a big vote to go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see a reason for it,’ Trump was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. ‘It may make it, it may not make it,’ he said, referring to Twitter’s recent internal turmoil.
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The reinstatement of Trump’s presence on the platform likely follows Musk’s purchase last month of Twitter — an acquisition that has quelled widespread concern that the billionaire owner will allow disseminators of lies and misinformation to flourish on the site.
Musk’s online poll, which ran for 24 hours before expiring on Saturday evening, concluded with 51.8 percent of more than 15 million votes cast in favor of restoring Trump’s Twitter account. This comes four days after Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2024.
Following the January 6 attack, Trump was also removed from Facebook and Instagram, which are owned by Meta Platforms, and Snapchat. His ability to post videos on his YouTube channel was also suspended.
Throughout his term as president, Trump’s use of social media has presented a significant challenge to major social media platforms, with concerns of misinformation, bigotry, harassment, and incitement to violence failing to hear from public officials. Used to demand to balance the interest of the public.
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But in a speech at an automotive vehicle conference in May, Musk insisted that Trump’s Twitter ban was an ‘ethically bad decision’ and ‘idiosyncratic in the extreme’.
Earlier this month, Musk announced the completion of the $44 billion ($66 billion) acquisition of Twitter in late October.
On Friday, Musk tweeted that the suspended Twitter accounts of comedian Kathy Griffin, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and conservative Christian news satire website Babylon B had been restored. He said that no decision has been taken on Trump yet. He answered ‘no’ when someone on Twitter asked him to reinstate conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ account.
In a tweet on Friday, Tesla’s chief executive described the company’s new content policy as ‘freedom of speech, but not freedom of access’.
He explained that tweets deemed ‘negative’ or involving ‘hate’ would be allowed on the site, but would only be visible to users who specifically searched for it. Musk said such tweets would also be ‘monetized, so Twitter won’t have any advertising or other revenue’.
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