UNITED STATES: Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, reinstated the Twitter account of former US president Donald Trump on Saturday after organising a Twitter poll asking about restraining Trump’s account, which had been banned from the social platform since January 6, 2021, following the Capitol Riot.
The organised poll gathered slightly more than 15 million people to vote, with 52% in favour of bringing Trump’s account back on the platform.
“The people have spoken,” Musk tweeted shortly after the 24-hour poll ended, nodding at the result of the recent Twitter poll on the reinstatement of the former president’s account.
He continued, “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” repeating a Latin proverb he also shared on Friday and which reads, “The voice of the people is the voice of God.”
Trump’s Twitter account started gaining followers and had almost 100,000 followers by 10 p.m. ET on Saturday.
Trump had over 88 million followers on the platform before he was banned on January 8, 2021. On Saturday night, once the account was reinstated, some users initially claimed they were unable to follow it.
Trump’s return to Twitter is politically advantageous for him. Musk has given the former president a tool to amplify his voice after he made it public that he would run for president again in 2024.
When Trump returned to Twitter early in the day, he appeared less interested. The former president said via video, “I don’t see any reason for it,” when asked if he intended to return to Twitter by a panel at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership conference.
He declared he would continue with his new platform, Truth Social, an app created by his business, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which he stated was performing “phenomenally well” and had higher user engagement than Twitter.
Following the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, Twitter made the remarkable decision to ban Trump, claiming that his posts were “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol.”
The timing of Trump’s comeback was also eagerly monitored—and feared—by many of Twitter’s advertisers after Musk initially stated in May that he planned to lift the ban on him.
Since then, the billionaire has made an effort to reassure customers and sponsors that such a choice would be carefully considered by a content moderation committee made up of individuals with “widely diverse viewpoints” and that no account reinstatements would take place before the council meeting.
Additionally, he added that unless there was a “clear process for doing so,” Twitter would not allow any banned users to be reinstated.
But last week, Musk let comic Kathy Griffin return after she had been suspended for violating his new policy against impersonation by changing her profile name to “Elon Musk” without making it clear that it was a parody account. There is no fresh information regarding the moderation council or the process.
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