Elon Musk holds ‘general amnesty’ poll for suspended Twitter accounts
Days after reinstating former US President Donald Trump’s account following a Twitter poll, Elon Musk held another poll to gauge public opinion on “general amnesty.” The new Twitter owner held a poll asking users whether all suspended accounts that “have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam” should be restored.
“Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” the tech billionaire asked, with options to vote either yes or no.
The results of the poll survey, which has a 24 hours window, will be out on November 25, 2022, around 11:16 PM IST.
Earlier, Musk had run an online poll asking Twitter users whether Trump’s account should be reinstated on the micro-blogging platform. In the poll that received 15,085,458 votes, 51.8 per cent voted yes and 48.2 per cent were against it.
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,’ Musk tweeted on Saturday.
Trump’s Twitter account appeared to be back as of Saturday evening and the last tweet was dated January 8, 2021, in which Trump said, “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
On being asked whether he plans to return to Twitter, the former president said he may not.
“I don’t see it because I do not see any reason for it,” Trump said, adding that he would stick with his new platform Truth Social, the app developed by his Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) startup.
Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter by the previous management in January 2021, days after the attempted insurrection by his supporters at the US Capitol. Trump’s supporters, not convinced with the 2020 president election results, attacked the Capitol as the US Congress attempted to certify Joe Biden’s victory.
Then legal affairs and policy chief at Twitter, Vijaya Gadde, was at the forefront of the decision to suspend Trump’s Twitter account.
Gadde had tweeted that the “account of @realDonaldTrump has been permanently suspended from Twitter due to the risk of further violence. We’ve also published our policy enforcement analysis – you can read more about our decision here”, linking to a Twitter blog post about the company’s decision to permanently suspend Trump’s Twitter account.