Should Twitter reinstate accounts banned in recent years? Its new owner asks the question to its subscribers on the social network. A survey whose results will guide Elon Musk’s future decisions.
A biased poll
“Should Twitter offer a blanket amnesty to suspended accounts, provided they haven’t broken the law or engaged in blatant spam?“, asks his subscribers the current boss of the social network. Internet users around the world can participate in the survey by responding with “yes” Where “Nope“The results will be known this Thursday, November 24 at 6 p.m. (French time). They will directly determine the future of suspended accounts. Thursday morning, 72% of users had answered “yes“.
However, this semblance of freedom raises questions from the point of view of the representativeness of the responses. Worse still, as AFP points out, the results could be manipulated through massive bot voting. Asking users directly is not a first for Elon Musk. The American billionaire had already rehabilitated Donald Trump’s Twitter account in recent days following a similar survey.
A hidden strategy?
Elon Musk actually wants to relax the rules of the platform in order to offer greater “freedom of expression.” “Over time, as we get closer to the truth, Twitter will gain the public’s trust“, he welcomed in a Tweet. A new doctrine that could quickly come up against the various regulators. According to John Wihbey, a professor at Northeastern University, the chaos that reigns lately within Twitter could constitute a tactic in order to “win time.”
“Regulators are definitely going to come after him, both in Europe and the US…and therefore a lot of what he does is try to prevent those fights“, assures the researcher. However, even the regulatory authorities could quickly become the youngest of its problems. The recent increase in undesirable or hateful content on the social network could encourage the application stores of Apple and Google to simply unpublish Twitter: A far from surreal prospect, as indicated by the rise in tensions between Elon Musk and the two American platforms in recent times.