Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk would lift the ban on the Twitter account of former President Donald Trump once he completes his acquisition of the social media company.
During a virtual interview on FT Live’s Future of the Car Conference, Musk said Twitter made a “mistake” banning the former president. He cited the reason that its action “alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”
“I would reverse the permanent ban,” said Musk and added, “I don’t own Twitter yet. So this is not like a thing that will definitely happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter?”
Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account on its platform after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Its decision was “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” by the former president, who had 80 million followers on the social media platform.
Musk also stated that Twitter “should not have permanent bans.” He believes that such action “fundamentally undermines trust” in the social media company. He prefers temporary suspensions and other tailored sanctions on users who post contents that are “illegal” or “destructive to the world.”
Last month, Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernen that he would not return to Twitter even if Musk reverses the permanent ban.
The former president said, “No, I won’t be going back on Twitter. I will be on Truth Social… We have a lot of people signed up. I like Elon Musk. I like him a lot. He’s an excellent individual. We did a lot for Twitter when I was in the White House. I was disappointed by the way I was treated by Twitter.”
Meanwhile, in a tweet on Tuesday, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey agreed with Musk’s opinion that permanent bans “don’t work.”
I do agree. There are exceptions (CSE, illegal behaviour, spam or network manipulation, etc), but generally permanent bans are a failure of ours and don’t work, which I wrote about here after the event (and called for a resilient social media protocol): https://t.co/fQ9KnrCQGX
— jack⚡️ (@jack) May 10, 2022
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