Musk reinstates Trump’s Twitter profile after vote
Elon Musk has reinstated Donald Trump’s account on Twitter, reversing a ban that kept the former president off the social media site since a pro-trump mob attacked the US Capitol on January 6 2021 as Congress was poised to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.
El on musk has reinstated donald Trump’ s account on Twitter, reversing a ban that kept the former president off the social media site since a protrump mob attacked the US Capitol on January 6 2021 as Congress was poised to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.
Mr Musk made the announcement in the early hours of Sunday morning UK time after holding a poll that asked Twitter users to click “yes” or “no” on whether Mr Trump’s account should be restored.
The “yes” vote won, with 51.8 per cent.
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted, using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God”.
It is still not clear whether Mr Trump would actually return to Twitter.
An irrepressible tweeter before he was banned, the former president has said in the past that he would not rejoin the social media platform even if his account was reinstated.
Shortly after Mr Musk’s announcement on Twitter, the former president’s account reappeared on the social media platform.
While it still had over 1.2million followers, it was not following any other users.
Mr Trump’s last tweet was posted on January 9 2021, reading: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
All of his former tweets also reappeared when the account was reinstated – more than 59,000 of them.
Earlier in the evening while addressing a Republican Jewish group meeting in Las Vegas, Mr Trump said that he was aware of Mr Musk’s poll but that he saw “a lot of problems at Twitter”, according to Bloomberg.
“I hear we’re getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it,” the former president was quoted as saying.
“It may make it, it may not make it,” he added, apparently referring to Twitter’s recent internal upheavals.
The founder of alternative platform Mastodon said Twitter has a “real chance of disappearing” under Mr Musk’s management which has seen its workforce of engineers decimated.
Eugen Rochko, a 29-yearold programmer from Germany who created Mastodon as a decentralised alternative to Twitter in 2017, called the billionaire CEO’S leadership style “erratic”, saying it showed “incompetence”.
“I would say it shows incompetence and a lack of understanding of the industry that he’s entered and the platform that he’s now in charge of,” Mr Rochko said.
“I would call (Mr Musk’s leadership style) erratic, and frankly, I’m not a fan of it.”
He went on to say that the sheer size of Twitter was not enough to insure it against failure. “There are examples from history of social media platforms which were also immensely huge, like Myspace, for example, and they lost their relevance. Perhaps they’re still around, but they’re no longer popular or the place that you go to. And even though Twitter is very large, it’s still not even the largest social media platform out there,” Mr Rochko said.