Amnesty on Twitter: what is it about?
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(CNN Business) --
Elon Musk said Thursday that he will begin restoring most previously suspended accounts on Twitter starting next week, in his most far-reaching move yet to undo the social media platform's policy. to permanently ban users who repeatedly violated its rules.
"The people have spoken," Musk tweeted Thursday.
“The amnesty starts next week.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei”.
The announcement comes after Musk polled his supporters Wednesday on whether to offer "general amnesty to suspended accounts, as long as they haven't broken the law or engaged in egregious spam."
Elon Musk Restores Donald Trump's Twitter Account
The poll, which closed around 12:45 pm (Miami time) this Thursday, ended with 72.4% voting in favor of the proposal and 27.6% voting against.
The poll garnered more than 3 million votes on Twitter.
It is unknown how Musk and his team at Twitter will rank which accounts have been banned for illegal content or spam versus other violations, nor how many accounts will be restored in total.
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Musk announced last week that he would restore Donald Trump's account after another poll he published on the platform came up slightly in favor of returning the former president to the platform, who had been banned after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Musk has also restored the accounts of several other controversial users, previously banned or suspended, including Canadian conservative podcaster Jordan Peterson, right-wing satire website Babylon Bee, comedian Kathy Griffin and representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk said he would create a "content moderation council" with "highly diverse viewpoints" and no major content decisions would be made until he was in place.
There is no evidence that such a group formed or was involved in Musk's platform switch decisions.
Instead, after Musk restored Trump's account, he tweeted "Vox Populi, Vox Dei," Latin for "the voice of the people is the voice of God."
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Before the Musk acquisition, Twitter typically imposed
"strikes"
corresponding to suspensions for increasing periods when users repeatedly violated its rules on Covid-19 or misinformation on civic integrity, giving them up to nine chances before they they were kicked off the platform.
The platform also had other enforcement mechanisms, such as labeling a tweet or reducing its scope, for its additional rules, including those prohibiting terrorism, threats of violence against individuals or groups of individuals, targeted abuse or harassment, posting of another person's private information and content that promotes abuse or self-harm.
Musk previously said he disagreed with Twitter's permanent ban policy.
“Twitter's new policy is free speech, not free reach,” Musk said in a tweet last week, expanding on an approach that is something of an industry standard.
“Negative/hate tweets will be minimized and demonetized, so there will be no ads or other revenue for Twitter.”
The decision to restore countless previously suspended accounts could further alienate Twitter advertisers, many of whom have fled the platform in the aftermath of the chaos since Musk took over and fearing their ads would end up running alongside objectionable content. .
Musk has said that the departure of key advertisers from Twitter in recent weeks has caused a "massive drop in revenue" for the company.
Elon MuskTwitter
