Twitter Braces for Trump’s Return as Musk Takes Over Platform

By Staff, Agencies

Hate speech and misinformation experts are bracing for the return of former US president Donald Trump to Twitter, as Elon Musk completes his acquisition of the social media site.

Twitter permanently removed Trump in January 2021, saying the former president’s tweets were “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.”

However, earlier this year Musk said he would reverse that ban, calling Twitter “left-biased,” and on Thursday he reportedly sacked the executive responsible.

“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” the Tesla chief executive told a Financial Times conference in May. “I think that was a mistake. It alienated the country and did not result in Donald Trump not having a voice. I think it was a morally bad decision and foolish in the extreme.”

Within hours of taking charge of Twitter, and before the completed acquisition was even formally confirmed, Musk sacked Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy, alongside Twitter’s chief executive officer, chief financial officer and general counsel.

Gadde, who joined the company in 2011 as general counsel, had risen to become the most powerful woman at the site, with a remit that covered moderation, public policy and legal affairs. As such, she is the staff member most identified with the suspension of Trump, and her exit created questions around Musk’s future plans.

Musk however said in a tweet on Friday the platform would be forming “a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints” to address such issues. “No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes,” he wrote.

Trump himself has been ambivalent. In a post on his personal “Truth Social” website, in which he falsely claimed that it had “bigger numbers than all other platforms”, he said he preferred his own site, but that he was “very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country.”