Elon Musk, upon arrival at the Met gala in New York, on May 2. ANDREW KELLY (REUTERS)
Elon Musk wants Donald Trump back on Twitter.
The billionaire has ignited the debate on freedom of expression on social networks with his offer to buy the San Francisco social network.
And this Tuesday, in a remote conference, the owner of Tesla criticized the decision of the technology company to permanently expel the former president after the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. “To be clear, I think it was a bad moral decision and extremely absurd,” said the businessman at a forum on the future of the automobile organized by the Financial Times in San Francisco.
Musk has disguised his purchase of Twitter as a crusade for free speech.
This Tuesday, he delved into his defense argument against the Republican, for whom he was a business adviser until the former president decided that the United States would abandon the Paris Agreement against climate change.
“The veto against Trump was not correct, I think it was a mistake … because it alienated a large part of the country and ultimately resulted in Donald Trump not having a voice,” said Musk, who considers Twitter an “extremely public platform. important for the future of civilization.
Donald Trump recently said that he would not return to Twitter and that he would focus on his own social network, Truth Social, a conservative platform that had been downloaded 872,000 times when it was launched on February 21.
But the installations among the followers of the former Republican president have run out of steam towards the end of March, with 60,000 weekly downloads.
Trump's saying, however, was before Musk so clearly showed him the way back to his favorite social network.
“If there are good and bad tweets, they should either be deleted or made invisible.
A temporary suspension should be appropriate, but not a permanent suspension," Musk added on Tuesday.
The veto of Trump came two days after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in rejection of the results of the presidential election in which Democrat Joe Biden won.
"After a careful review of recent tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account, and the context surrounding them, we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement to violence," the technology company led by Jack Dorsey said at the time.
In Musk's vision, Twitter has tilted to the left.
The tycoon believes that a technology company "needs much more balance" in its content management.
The businessman offered almost 43.4 billion dollars to take over the company.
The operation will close in two or three months.
His siege of the company began with the purchase in early April of 9.1% of the company's shares.
He then doubled down on him and went for it all.
Since then, he has hinted at some of the keys to the changes that the South African will print at the helm.
Among these, the elimination of bots from the platform, the charging of a fee to organizations and institutions for the publication of messages, among other initiatives.
The employees of the technology company, where there is already an imminent air of change, had anticipated the possibility that Musk opens today.
A company spokesman said a few weeks ago that decisions about moderation and content policy did not rest solely with executives and board members.
Musk, however, has focused his criticism (and his more than 80 million followers) on those responsible for these processes, including the lawyer Vijaya Gadde, who has been considered by the most radical sectors of the right as the architect of censorship. to the former president.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS América newsletter and receive all the key information on current affairs in the region.