Billionaire Elon Musk says that he would reverse former US President Donald Trump’s Twitter ban when he finally takes over the leadership of the social media platform. He is currently putting together the finances needed to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
On the 8th of January, Donald Trump was banned from Twitter for statements that the company claimed breached its regulations, claiming “the risk of further incitement of violence.”
The unprecedented move came after the riot on Jan. 6 in which hundreds of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attack that resulted in five deaths and left about 140 police officers injured.
According to Musk at an interview at the FT’s Future of the Car conference, “I think it was a morally bad decision, and foolish in the extreme.”
“I would reverse the permaban [on Trump].” “Obviously I don’t own Twitter yet, so this is not a thing that will definitely happen.”
“Banning Trump from Twitter didn’t end Trump’s voice,” Musk said. “It will amplify it among the right. This is why it’s morally wrong and flat-out stupid.”
President Trump had asked a court to mandate that Twitter restore his social media account last year but it was denied. He subsequently went ahead to launch his own social media platform, Truth, which seems to be struggling.
Musk has already publicly criticised Twitter’s executives involved in some of the company’s controversial moderation decisions, drawing criticism from many social media experts who claimed he does not understand the complexities of preventing hate and misinformation from taking over social media sites.
He said though he opposed lifetime bans, he still believed it was right to suspend the accounts of users sometimes, or make some of their tweets less visible to other Twitter users.
He is aligning with Jack Dorsey’s stance on the same issue. Former CEO, Dorsey noted, “As I’ve said before, I don’t believe any permanent ban (with the exception of illegal activity) is right, or should be possible.” “This is why we need a protocol that’s resilient to the layers above,” said the Former CEO, who left Twitter in November 2021 and is now the Block Head of Block.
So it would seem that unlike Facebook where Mark Zuckerberg was involved in the decision-making process of the company, Jack wasn’t so involved in decisions like this.
When asked if he thought those tactics should be used to control Trump’s messages, he stated that Trump had said he would not return to Twitter but would stay on his own new site, Truth Social, meaning that Twitter had failed to silence Trump’s “voice”.
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