Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, announced on Friday that he was restoring three prominent accounts that had been suspended for violating the terms of service, but he said he had not yet decided what to do with the account of former President Donald Trump.
Musk tweeted that “Trump decision has not yet been made” as Twitter users prepared for significant changes to the business he recently acquired.
Musk announced that he was bringing back the conservative satirical website Babylon Bee, scholar Jordan Peterson, and comic Kathy Griffin.
The Babylon Bee reported in March that Twitter had suspended its account as a result of the website’s treatment of a trans woman working for the Biden administration, which Twitter at the time claimed amounted to “hateful behaviour” that was against the law.
The site’s CEO claimed at the time that Musk called him and expressed worry.
Griffin was punished for imitating Musk, while Peterson was suspended for a message that denigrated transgender people.
Trump’s reinstatement by Musk may be just a matter of time. Trump’s return was a “near-certainty,” according to Yoel Roth, a former Twitter executive in charge of trust and security, in a column published in The New York Times on Friday.
Roth claimed that instead of following a predetermined procedure that involves other people, Musk appears to make all such decisions “by unilateral edict” on his own.
Roth noted that Musk “has made obvious that at the end of the day, he’ll be the one calling the shots” by designating himself “Chief Twit.”
In January 2021, Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account due to his involvement in the riot in the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and the likelihood of further violence. 88.8 million people were following Trump on Twitter at the time of his suspension.
Bloomberg News reports that Musk, the richest man in the world, predicted a Trump comeback in May when he labelled the expulsion “morally wrong and flat-out foolish.”
However, it appeared that the new Twitter owner was not planning to reinstate one account. Musk’s response to a user’s request to reinstate conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has been ordered to pay over $1.5 billion in defamation damages, was one word: “No.”
In a tweet sent on Friday, Musk also started outlining a new strategy for content moderation, saying that he would permit “freedom of speech” but not “freedom of reach.”
He said that as a result, “hate tweets” will be given less weight in the platform’s algorithm while still being accessible. It was unclear if Musk had altered Twitter’s rules prohibiting harassment and hate speech.
“You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from the rest of the Internet,” Musk wrote.
Musk clarified that this rule would only apply to specific tweets, not to whole accounts.
For years, Twitter has maintained that it already de-ranks some tweets that do not adhere to its policies.
However, keeping tweets that promote “hateful activity” would be a significant departure from Twitter’s policy forbidding such posts. Hateful tweets must frequently be deleted per the current guideline.
Following his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Musk stated that it will take him a few weeks to decide what to do with the accounts that the previous administration had de-platformed.
