Elon Musk may have ‘bad news’ for banned users on Twitter

It has been bit of a whirlwind of a week as far Elon Musk and Twitter are concerned. The Tesla CEO — and now also Twitter CEO — has been dropping big hints on how he wants to change the social media platform. Since he took over Musk has been asked many times about what happens to the users — the most high-profile being former US president Donald Trump — who had been banned from Twitter.
In a tweet, Musk has confirmed that no one will be coming back any time soon. “Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks,” said Musk in the tweet. He followed it up with another tweet explaining what the “clear process” might entail. “Twitter’s content moderation council will include representatives with widely divergent views, which will certainly include the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence,” he said in another tweet.
In another Musk tweeted that he did indeed meet civil society leaders and discussed “how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies.”
Jessica J Gonzalez, one of the civil society leaders who met Musk said that, the group had asked Musk “to retain & enforce election integrity measures, to not reinstate deplatformed accounts w/o a robust & transparent process and to make sure that the people most impacted by online hate and harassment – and yes, I mean women of color, inform his decisions.” Gonzalez said that Musk agreed with them. However, she did add “actions speak louder than words, and we will ultimately judge Musk by his deeds, not his rhetoric.”

What Musk said about banned accounts in the past

Murmurs about banned accounts making a comeback grew stronger as in the past Musk had said that it was a “mistake” to ban people. “Permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts… I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” Musk had earlier said at a Financial Times conference. He also said that the move was a “mistake” as it ending up alienating “a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”
Before he actually acquired Twitter, Musk had said that he would reverse the permanent ban when asked about Trump. He also made a tongue-in-cheek comment “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money!”