Elon Musk said Thursday that many previously suspended Twitter accounts will be allowed back on the platform after a landslide of users responding to an informal poll by new owners.
The announcement comes at a time when Musk is facing backlash that his content moderation standards are subject to his personal whims, determined by one account and not by another.
“The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week,” Musk tweeted, responding to the poll.
He added, repeating a Latin adage meaning, “Vox Populi, Vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God,” that he has used when talking about other Twitter polls.
Of the 3.16 million respondents to Wednesday’s Musk poll, 72.4% said they would return suspended accounts to Twitter unless they broke the law or engaged in “evil spam.” I replied that it should be allowed.
It was the same type of informal yes/no vote of Twitter users devised by Musk to decide whether to reinstate former U.S. President Donald Trump on the platform.
Trump’s Twitter account was reopened on Saturday after a small majority of respondents supported the move.
Twitter polls, which are open to all users, are unscientific and can be targeted by fake accounts and bots.
Musk has 118 million followers, but many of Twitter’s 450 million monthly active users may never have seen a poll question.
A bulk amnesty for suspended accounts could alert government agencies that have been closely monitoring Musk’s handling of hate speech since he bought the influential platform for $44 billion. .
It could also come as a surprise to tech companies like Apple and Google, which have the power to ban Twitter from their mobile app stores due to content concerns.
Trump was ousted from the podium early last year for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of supporters who were trying to overturn the 2020 election results.
Musk’s resurrection of Trump followed the resurrection of other suspended accounts, including a conservative parody site and a psychologist who violated Twitter’s rules on words identifying transgender people.
The CEOs of Tesla and SpaceX have said conspiracy theorist Alex Jones will not return to Twitter and will remain banned from the platform.
Based on his own experience with the death of his first child, Musk said on Sunday that he “will show no mercy to anyone who uses the death of a child for profit, politics, or prestige.”
Jones was ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for lying about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting that killed 26 people.
Musk, who completed his Twitter acquisition in late October, declined to say whether the ban lifted in the polls would be permanent or temporary.
The future of Twitter’s content moderation has become a pressing concern as major advertisers who had stayed away from the site after its failure to reopen earlier this month were embarrassed to see a rise in fake accounts. increase.
Meanwhile, the team responsible for keeping malicious activity off the site has been wiped out, and half of all employees are victims of mask-led layoffs that left the company.
Northeastern University media professor John Wivey speculates that all the chaos may stem from Musk trying to “buy time.”
“Regulators are certainly going to come after him, both in Europe and maybe the United States … and therefore a lot of what he’s doing is trying to frame those fights,” Wihbey said.
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