Ummm, Maybe I Won’t Unban Everyone
Musk calls himself a “free speech absolutist. He famously said banning Donald Trump from Twitter wasn’t just a mistake, it was also immoral. Musk promised on multiple occasions that he would welcome the former president back onto the platform. In fact, Musk said he’s against the idea of permanent bans altogether, and he thinks basically any speech that isn’t illegal should be allowed on the Twitter.
If he follows through on his word (which is a big “if,” given his track record) that would mean a long list of monsters would make their way back to the land of tweets.
That would make a lot of people on the right happy, but it turns out (like it so often does), that Musk spoke before he thought through the consequences. Now that reality struck and he’s had time to think about whether or not being the home of hate speech would be good for Twitter’s bottom line, Musk doesn’t seem so sure about all that unbanning anymore:
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
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022
Musk also wrote that the people making that call about all the unbanning will include “civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence” and will likely take several weeks time, much to the chagrin of racism fans who thought they’d finally found a champion.
