Musk meets with critics, says Twitter won’t restore banned users before election
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto)
Twitter won't restore banned accounts until after next week's midterm election, Elon Musk wrote in a tweet early on Wednesday. That means former President Donald Trump and others banned by the pre-Musk Twitter won't be allowed back just yet.
"Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks," Musk wrote. "Twitter's content moderation council will include representatives with widely divergent views, which will certainly include the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence."
Twitter banned Trump after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, explaining that "we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence." Musk said in May that Twitter's decision to ban Trump was "morally wrong and flat-out stupid" and that he would reverse the ban if he completed his then-pending acquisition of Twitter. He also said that "permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots or spam."