Elon Musk Says He'd Reverse Twitter's "Morally Bad" Ban Of Trump
Keneci Channel
When Twitter permanently banned former United States president Donald Trump from the platform, critics including foreign leaders condemned the move and warned against the concentration of power over global conversations in the hands of few unelected executives of private multinational companies. Since then many countries have introduced laws and measures aimed at cracking down on big tech companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter.
Apparently, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk was also miffed by Twitter's ban of Trump. Twitter accepted his offer to purchase the company on April 25, but Musk says the deal will take another two to three months before it is finalized.
During an appearance Tuesday, on Financial Times' 'Future of the Car' conference, Musk slammed the social media's ban of the former president.
"Permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts…" the Tesla CEO said when asked if he'd reverse the ban. "I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake, because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice."
Musk added: "I would reverse the permanent ban. I don’t own Twitter yet. So this is not like a thing that will definitely happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter?"
The SpaceX CEO also said that former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey agrees with him that Trump should not have been banned.
Dorsey who currently run payment company Block, confirmed in a tweet, after Musk's remarks, that he indeed agrees with the SpaceX CEO. He 'quote-tweeted' a January 13, tweet in which he expressed regrets for how the social media company which he ran then, handled the banning of Trump.
"I do agree," Dorsey wrote. "There are exceptions (CSE, illegal behaviour, spam or network manipulation, etc), but generally permanent bans are a failure of ours and don't work, which I wrote about here after the event (and called for a resilient social media protocol)"
The Block CEO later added: "it was a business decision[to ban Trump], it shouldn't have been. and we should always revisit our decisions and evolve as necessary. I stated in that thread and still believe that permanent bans of individuals are directionally wrong."
Musk's remarks triggered leftists who took to social media to rail against the Tesla CEO. "Trump's Twitter" trended on social media.
Trump on his part, has said he would not return to Twitter even if offered the chance, saying he will stay on his Truth Social platform.
"I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH," Trump told Fox News on April 25. "I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it, and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH."
During his appearance on the FT event Tuesday, Musk also said that Twitter has a "strong left-wing bias," and should be more even-handed in its content moderation policy. Critics have been slamming the social media company for years for its harsh and biased censorship measures against conservatives on the platform.
WATCH Elon Musk's remarks on Twitter's Trump ban