Elon Musk launched a Twitter poll asking whether he should reinstate former US President Donald Trump's account on the social media platform - and it's gathering more than a million votes an hour on the social media platform, the new owner says.
The billionaire revealed yesterday that no decision has been made on reinstating the former president's account, which was permanently suspended following the Capitol Hill riots in January 2021. However, he launched a poll on his Twitter account asking if Mr Trump should be allowed to return to the platform.
So far, the poll has had more than 9.2 million votes - with Mr Musk tweeting: "Trump poll getting ~1M votes/hour!"
The poll is currently split with 52.5 per cent saying his account should be reinstated, while 47.5 per cent said no. Mr Musk then tweeted the Latin phrase "Vox Populi, Vox Dei", which translates to "the voice of the people is the voice of God".
Yesterday, Mr Musk announced that other controversial figures Kathie Griffin, Jorden Peterson and Babylon Bee would have their accounts reinstated. He posted: “New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
“Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.”
He continued: “Note, this applies just to the individual tweet, not the whole account. Kathie Griffin, Jorden Peterson & Babylon Bee have been reinstated. Trump decision has not yet been made."
He posted the series of Tweets after stating: “Freedom Fridays …”
Comedian Griffin was banned earlier this month from Twitter under a prohibition of “parody” accounts after changing her account name to match that of the Tesla chief executive. Right wing author and psychologist Dr Peterson was suspended by Twitter in July after he posted about transgender actor Elliot Page, which the site ruled had violated its rules on “hateful content”.
The account of Christian satirical news site Babylon Bee was suspended for the same reason after it posted in March: “The Babylon Bee’s Man of the Year is Rachel Levine,” referring to the US Assistant Health Secretary, who openly identifies as a transgender woman.
It has been a tumultuous time for Twitter since Tesla owner Mr Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of the social media company. He sacked half of Twitter’s 7,500 global workforce a week after taking over the company, ended remote working and set an ultimatum for remaining staff to agree to longer, more intense working patterns or leave.
With so much of Twitter’s workforce now gone, there is much speculation that the site will crash during the FIFA World Cup – one of the site’s busiest traffic events.
