By Obinna Ezenwa
Elon Musk has disclosed his intension to reverse Donald Trump’s ban from Twitter, stating that it would be so if his bid to buy Twitter is successful.
Musk had agreed a $44bn (£34.5bn) takeover bid with the Twitter board last month.
But said it was not a done deal and that ideally it would be completed in the next two to three months.
The world’s richest man told the Financial Times Future of the Car summit “Twitter’s decision to ban the former US president was “morally wrong and flat-out stupid”.
Recall that in January 2021, Twitter said Mr Trump’s account was “permanently suspended… due to the risk of further incitement of violence” following the storming of the Capitol.
But the Tesla owner said: “I would reverse the permanent ban but I don’t own Twitter yet so this is not a thing that will definitely happen.”
According to him, the ban had not silenced Mr Trump, but by making him move onto his own Truth Social site, it had amplified his voice among the far right.
He pointed out that Mr Trump had previously said he would not return to Twitter even if his account was reinstated.
Mr Musk said he had spoken to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on the subject of locking users out of their social media accounts in response to offensive tweets.
“He and I are of the same mind that permanent bans should be extremely rare and reserved for accounts that are bots or scam accounts,” he said.
Buttressing his point, Mr Musk said if someone tweeted something “illegal or otherwise destructive to the world” there should be temporary suspension or the post should be made invisible.
He said Twitter needed to build more trust by sharing its algorithm and asking people to make suggestions on how to improve it.
He also noted that the company had a strong left bias because of its origins in the San Francisco tech community and needed to be “more even-handed”.
“Victory would be the far right 10% and the far left 10% are equally upset,” he said.
