|
This article requires pre-publication review by an uninvolved reviewer (one not substantially involved in writing the article). Note, only qualified reviewers may do this and publish articles. This right requires experience with Wikinews policies and procedures. To request the right, apply here.Reviewers, please use Easy Peer Review per these instructions.
-Article last amended: Nov 24 at 17:43:16 UTC (history)Please check the talk page history before reviewing. |
| This article requires pre-publication review by an uninvolved reviewer (one not substantially involved in writing the article).
Note, only qualified reviewers may do this and publish articles. This right requires experience with Wikinews policies and procedures. To request the right, apply here.Reviewers, please use Easy Peer Review per these instructions.
-Article last amended: Nov 24 at 17:43:16 UTC (history)Please check the talk page history before reviewing. |
Tuesday, November 22, 2022
On Saturday, social media platform Twitter ended its ban of former US President Donald Trump after a user poll.
Platform owner Elon Musk tweeted the results late Saturday, “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.” (“the voice of the people, the voice of God”). Of 15 million votes, 51.8% were for, while 48.2% were against Trump’s return.
On Friday, during the poll, Musk tweeted that bots were likely manipulating the procedure, but “[they] might be running out of steam soon”. By this time, a skeleton crew was operating the service after Musk terminated “half the workforce”, and “another 1,200” resigned last week to protest the company’s new “hardcore working practices”.
On his own platform, Truth Social, Trump encouraged his 4.3 million followers to vote for him on the poll. On Saturday, prior to the final results, Trump asserted, “Truth Social is… doing phenomenally well…[a]nd I’ll be staying there.”
Twitter management banned Trump, with over 80 million followers at the time, after the January 6 United States Capitol attack citing concerns about “further incitement of violence”. Trump then launched Truth Social, proclaiming it a domain for in contrast to “liberal media”.
Musk acquired Twitter on October 27. He proclaimed himself as a “free speech absolutist” and against of “permabans”. In May, while the purchase was underway, he called the ban “morally bad” and “foolish in the extreme”. Trump was supportive of the acquisition.
After the purchase, Musk stated that Twitter would not perform “major content moderation or account reinstatements” until a “content moderation council” could assemble to address those issues. Some businesses withdrawn from using the platform, arguing that Twitter Blue, Musk’s initiative, might allow users to impersonate them.
Derrick Johnson, President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, remarked Saturday, “[if] Elon Musk continues to run Twitter like this, using garbage polls that do not represent the American people and the needs of our democracy, God help us all.”
On Sunday, Adam Schiff, a Democrat US Representative from California, said on ABC News that ending the ban was “a terrible mistake…[i]t just underscores the erratic leadership of Twitter now under Musk, but also the security concerns, with security people fleeing Twitter, and what that means for the protection of Americans’ private data.”
Republican US Representative Adam Kinzinger from Illinois), a member of the January 6th Committee, concurred on CNN: “Now this idea that he’s going to come on and be reformed, everybody knows he won’t”.