Does Twitter boss Elon Musk (51) now follow his words with actions? A few months ago, the tech billionaire caused a stir with the announcement that he wanted to lift the ban of former US President Donald Trump (76) on Twitter.
Musk is now voting for his return to his online network. He launched a 24-hour poll on Saturday night to unblock the Republican’s profile. The first results show that things are not looking too bad for Trump. In the first hours, 59.6 percent of the nearly two million participants supported the former president’s return to the platform.
“Decision Not Made Yet”
The Tesla boss responded to the vote with the Latin phrase “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”, which means something like “The voice of the people is the voice of God”.
Trump has been banned from Twitter since January 2021. At the time, the Republican downplayed the violent storming of the Capitol on the short message service and allegedly incited his supporters to do so. Twitter then permanently blocked his account due to the “risk of further incitement to violence,” the company said. For Trump, who had nearly 90 million followers and used the platform as his primary means of communication, the suspension of his profile was a blow.
Whether Trump will be allowed to celebrate his comeback on Twitter remains to be seen. It is not certain that Musk will follow the wishes of the user. “Trump’s decision has not yet been made,” the high-tech billionaire said Friday night.
Does Trump even want to go back to Twitter?
The other question is whether the former US president wants to return to Twitter at all. He recently indicated that he does not want to return to the online platform with the blue bird, but rather to stay with the self-founded Truth Social network.
A few hours earlier, Musk had announced that the accounts of comedian Kathy Griffin, 62, psychologist Jordan Peterson, 60, and conservative parody site Babylon Bee had been “restored.”
Musk took over Twitter at the end of October for a whopping $ 44 billion (almost 42 billion Swiss francs). Critics fear he could drastically limit the fight against the spread of hate speech and fake news on Twitter. (dzc/AFP)