Former US President Donald Trump is not interested in returning to Twitter, despite Elon Musk reinstating his account. Musk had organised a poll to ask users if Trump’s account should be restored. Around 15 million Twitter users voted in the poll with 51.8 per cent voting in favor of reinstatement.
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted.
Once the news broke, people started following Trump’s account, with the number reaching nearly 100,000 followers by 10 pm ET Saturday. Some reported issues in following the account. Notably, before being banned on January 8, 2021 following the Capitol riots, Trump had 88 million followers.
However, Trump doesn’t seem keen to return to the platform and prefers sticking to Truth Social, the app developed by his Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) startup. “I don’t see any reason for it,” he said via video when asked whether he planned to return to Twitter by a panel at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting.
Trump has been an extremely vocal supporter of Musk and had expressed happiness when he took over the social media platform. But he believes that Twitter suffers from bots, fake accounts and more such “incredible” problems. On the other hand, Truth Social, he says, has better user engagement than Twitter and was doing “phenomenally well”.
Around 4.57 million people follow Trump on Truth Social which was launched on Apple’s App Store in February and Google’s Play Store in October. According to his agreement with the company, Trump is obligated to give Truth Social a six-hour exclusive on any post, but is free to post “political messaging, political fundraising or get-out-the vote efforts” on any site, at any time, as per a May SEC filing.
In May, Musk had said he planned to reverse the ban on Trump’s account. After taking over the reins, he assured advertisers that all such decisions will be carefully weighed by a content moderation council composed of people with “widely diverse viewpoints” and an account will be reinistated after a “clear process for doing so” is established.
However, Musk seems to have forgotten his own statements and has already reinstated comedian Kathy Griffin, who had been banned for changing her profile name to “Elon Musk”, violating his new rule against impersonation without indicating it was a parody account.
Musk has drastically reduced the workforce at the company, firing several of the staff from the trust and safety team, which is responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation and harmful content. He is reportedly planning to lay off people from the sales and partnership divisions as well. All this has advertisers worried, and if Trump chooses to return at any time, things might get murkier for Musk.
(With inputs from agencies)
