Elon Musk Officially Let Donald Trump Back On Twitter
Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump's Twitter account after a poll majority came back 51.8% to 48.2% in favor of his reinstatement.
Twitter continues to dominate national headlines in the wake of the ownership transfer to Billionaire Elon Musk. It began with the long and drawn-out legal battle all summer long over whether Elon would be able to purchase the social media giant, then the massive layoff of 50% of the company’s employees, to now officially reinstating former President Donald Trump’s controversial account. According to NPR Elon tweeted, “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”
He is referring to a poll that Twitter posing the question of whether former President Trump should be reinstated to the platform. 15 million Twitter users participated in the survey and the results were 51.8% in favor of reinstatement and 48.2% opposed to reinstatement. The narrow margin of victory is another sign of just how divisive Donald Trump’s influence is on our country.
Breaking down the results tells us that 7,700,000 users cast their opinion as a yes vote and 7,380,000 cast their opinion as a no. That means that only 120,000 differences in votes over a 15-million-person sample size could have swung the majority in the other direction which is an extremely narrow victory for former President Donald Trump. Elon’s decision to allow Twitter users to decide such an important content direction for the fledgling company is peculiar on its own.
Past statements from Elon about the company’s controversial and misleading Tweets from platform policy were that the company would convene a “content moderation council” to help set policies, and no major content moderation decisions would be made before it was in place. Twitter has not commented since this decision on whether that council is in place and whether it was their decision to allow platform users to determine such an incredibly important company decision. A former Twitter executive leader that had been recently laid off has claimed that Elon made statements in senior-level meetings that “Mr. Musk has made clear that at the end of the day, he’ll be the one calling the shots,” as reported by CNN Business.
Twitter has now opened the company to multiple levels of criticism and commentary because of the many conflicts of interest that could be tied to this decision. Since Elon took over in October the advertisers have been pulling Twitter’s ad revenue out of the company.
Given that, speculatively, this decision could be directly tied to the company vying for a money grab in an attempt to lure back all the right-wing ad dollars that pulled away from Twitter when they banned Donald Trump’s account after the January 6th, 2021, insurrection at the Capital. It also raises the question as to whether or not the poll that Twitter ran was boosted to certain demographics to ensure the outcome was in the line with the company’s strategy about allowing former President Donald Trump back on Twitter.
Additionally, it’s pertinent to consider if the poll was answered by only citizens of the United States, and if not, what percentage of respondents were foreigners. Also, if that was the case should they have allowed their votes in the poll? If the Congressional Committee looking into former President Donald Trump’s role in the January 6th Capital insurrection have not handed down a formal opinion or decision, should Twitter allow someone accused of using their platform to incite violence and harmful public protest to continue to spew their rhetoric to the masses?
Many questions are going to arise in the coming months and weeks. Especially with former President Trump announcing his candidacy for President in 2024 last Tuesday. One thing is certain is that the spotlight is going to remain on Twitter and Elon until the direction of this company and whether it will be able to survive all the controversy it has stirred up since Elon’s 44-billion-dollar purchase of the company last month.
