Twitter rescinds ban on former US President Trump

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

The social media platform Twitter ended its ban of former US President Donald Trump Saturday, after users voted to reinstate him in an on-site poll.

The platform’s owner, Elon Musk, announced the results late Saturday, tweeting, “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.” Vox Populi, Vox Dei is Latin for “the voice of the people, the voice of God”.

Of 15 million votes, 51.8% were in favor of allowing Trump to return, while 48.2% were against.

On Friday, while the poll was ongoing, Musk conceded that bots were likely manipulating it, tweeting, “Bot & troll armies might be running out of steam soon. Some interesting lessons to clean up future polls.”

Trump had been banned from Twitter after the January 6 United States Capitol attack; the company’s management cited concerns about “further incitement of violence” at that time.

Whether Trump will return to the platform remains to be seen.

After Twitter banned him, he launched his own social media platform, Truth Social, proclaiming it a domain for the right, in contrast to “liberal media”; on Saturday, prior to the final results, Trump asserted, “Truth Social is through the roof, it’s doing phenomenally well…[a]nd I’ll be staying there.” He did still encourage his followers on Truth Social to vote for his return in the poll.

Trump had over 80 million followers, while he has only 4.3 million on Truth Social, so he may decide to return to reach more people.

Musk acquired Twitter in October, explaining, “…[I]t is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”

Musk has said he is a “free speech absolutist”; he has additionally expressed disapproval of “permabans”, and in May, while the purchase was underway, said the ban on Trump was “morally bad”, as well as “foolish in the extreme”. Trump was supportive of the acquisition.

However, Musk reversed course after the purchase, stating that Twitter would not perform “major content moderation or account reinstatements” until a “content moderation council” could assemble to address those issues.

Shortly after the acquisition was completed, Musk terminated “half the workforce”, and “another 1,200” resigned over the past week in protest of newly instituted “hardcore working practices”. “A skeleton staff” are responsible for keeping Twitter functional.

Some businesses have also withdrawn from using the platform, nervous that the Twitter Blue service will allow users to impersonate them, although the company has paused it.

Derrick Johnson, the President of the NAACP, remarked Saturday, “[if] Elon Musk continues to run Twitter like this, using garbage polls that do not represent the American people and the needs of our democracy, God help us all.”

On Sunday, US Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), said on ABC News that ending the ban was “a terrible mistake…[i]t just underscores the erratic leadership of Twitter now under Musk, but also the security concerns, with security people fleeing Twitter, and what that means for the protection of Americans’ private data.”

US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), a member of the January 6th Committee, concurred on CNN: “Now this idea that he’s going to come on and be reformed, everybody knows he won’t”.

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