After the attack on the Capitol on January 6 last year, Twitter permanently banned the personal account of Donald Trump, citing “the risk of further inciting violence.”
To this end, Musk recently conducted a poll on the platform to solicit users’ opinions and views on unblocking the account. There are two options on the vote: one is to support the unblocking of Trump’s account; the other is to continue to freeze.
As of 7:00 p.m. local time on November 18, more than 15 million users participated in the 24-hour voting activity. The final result showed that 51.8% of the voters were in favor of unblocking, while others were against it. “Public opinion carries the most weight,” Musk tweeted.
According to a Reuters report, Trump’s account had more than 88 million Twitter followers before it was banned on January 8, 2021. As of 10 pm Eastern Time on the 19th, the number of fans of this account, which has been disabled for nearly two years, still reached about 100,000. Trump, however, appeared less enthusiastic about returning to Twitter earlier in the day.
On October 27 this year, Musk completed a $44 billion deal to privatize Twitter and took over Twitter. Later, Trump said that he “appreciated Musk’s personality,” but believed that he would continue to stay on the Truth Social platform he founded because the platform’s user engagement was higher than Twitter’s and it performed “very well.” He added that “Twitter couldn’t have succeeded” without himself.
Just this week, on the evening of November 15th local time, Trump held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, officially announcing his candidacy for the 2024 US presidential election.
In this year’s mid-term elections, the performance of the Republican Party was somewhat unsatisfactory. Not only did the expected “red wave” fail to appear, but the current control of the House of Representatives was barely won with a narrow margin of 218 votes, while the Senate continued to be controlled by the Democrats.
Interestingly, on November 7, the day before the mid-term polling day, Musk suddenly spoke out, calling on “independent-minded” voters to vote for the Republican Party. “I’ve always voted Democrat until this year. I’m open to voting Democrat again in the future,” he said.
Some critics worry that in the future, he may significantly limit Twitter’s crackdown on the spread of hate information and fake news.
In fact, as early as May this year, Musk expressed his dissatisfaction with the permanent ban on the platform. He argued that the ban was “a mistake because it alienated a large segment of the American people” and undermined trust in Twitter.
The “resurrection” of Trump’s account is a good thing for Republican followers, but it may make many Twitter advertisers feel uncomfortable. Tom Fitton, president of the nonprofit Judicial Watch, told Musk the left has government agencies, traditional media and NGOs “focused like a laser” on Big Tech to suppress and censor online speech, while conservatives have only “a few social media accounts and a handful of groups” fighting for free speech.
In reply to Felton’s post, Musk acknowledged that this assessment is “more accurate” than most realize.
In addition to Trump, Musk also restored the accounts of other blocked conservative and liberal prominent users, including The Babylon Bee and Jordan Peterson.
The Babylon Bee is a conservative Christian news satire site that publishes satirical articles on topics such as religion, politics, current events and public figures. Peterson, a Canadian media personality, clinical psychologist, author and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, is generally classified as conservative for his views on cultural and political issues.