“The people have spoken”
Elon Musk unblocks Donald Trump’s Twitter account
11/20/2022, 02:25 am
The new Twitter boss Elon Musk has ex-President Donald Trump’s profile unblocked in the online service. “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted. Before that, he lets the users of the online platform vote in a survey whether they support Trump’s return.
Twitter wants to allow US President Donald Trump, who has been banned from the Internet platform since the beginning of 2021, to return. This was announced by Twitter owner Elon Musk in a tweet on Saturday (local time). In a Twitter poll initiated by Musk, a slim majority of the participating users had spoken out in favor of reactivation of Trump’s access.
Just over 15 million Twitter users took part in the vote. In the end, 51.8 percent voted to unblock Trump’s account. The portal is said to currently have almost 238 million users. If the information is correct, just over 7.8 million users would have voted for Trump to be unblocked. This corresponds to less than 3.3 percent of all Twitter users.
Shortly after the unlock, 1.2 million accounts followed Donald Trump. A direct link to his campaign for the 2024 presidential election was found in his account profile.
Trump suspended after his supporters stormed the Capitol
Trump was banned from Twitter after his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He had more than 88 million followers on Twitter. However, Trump had previously stated that he did not want to return to the platform with the blue bird, preferring to stay with the Truth Social network he founded himself.
Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion at the end of October. Critics fear that he could drastically limit the fight against the spread of hate speech and fake news on Twitter.