While speaking at the Financial Times Future of the Car conference, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who recently took over the social media platform Twitter at $44 billion, said that he would reverse Twitter’s ban on former U.S. President Donald Trump. He was permanently suspended from Twitter shortly after the Jan. 6 riot on the U.S. Capitol. Twitter cited “the risk of further incitement of violence” in its decision.
“The ban was morally wrong and flat-out stupid. The decision to ban Trump from Twitter did not silence the former president’s voice, but rather amplified his views among people on the political right”, said Musk.
“I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice. So I think this may end up being frankly worse than having a single forum where everyone can debate. I guess the answer is that I would reverse the permanent ban,” he further added.
He added that his distaste for permanent bans is shared by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, who voiced his agreement in a Tuesday tweet in which he said “generally permanent bans are a failure of ours and don’t work.”Musk has repeatedly criticized Twitter’s content moderation decisions, including the Trump ban, but had mostly avoided saying what he would do about Trump’s account until he was pressed for more details Tuesday by Peter Campbell, a Financial Times automotive correspondent.
Though Trump has previously said that he had no intention of rejoining Twitter even if his account was reinstated, and he would instead focus on his own platform, Truth Social, which has been mired in problems since its launch earlier this year.
