In an effort to shake-up the social media service, Elon Musk has said that he would reinstate Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
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Late on Friday, the South African-born billionaire, who recently bought the social media giant for $44 billion, asked users whether or not the controversial former US President should be allowed back on the platform after he was barred, amidst allegations of inciting violence, following the riots, at the US Capitol.
More than 15 million users voted in the poll with nearly 52 percent calling for Trump to be allowed to tweet again.
“The people have spoken,” Musk tweeted on Saturday. “Trump will be reinstated.”
The billionaire added the Latin phrase “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” which roughly translates to “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.
Reinstate former President Trump
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2022
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Trump’s Twitter reinstatement raised immediate concerns from misinformation experts and others.
Research director at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which has studied the proliferation of misinformation, Joan Donovan, said that if Trump tweets content that he has been sharing exclusively on Truth Social, Twitter would become a “hotbed of hate, harassment and incitement.”
Director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, Alex Stamos, added that it was “odd” that Musk, who has spent months complaining about Twitter’s problem with bot accounts, would use a Twitter poll in which bots could be voting to decide the issue and then assume that the result “reflects some kind of legitimate ‘voice of the people.’”
“It is definitely possible for small groups to create large numbers of accounts to manipulate features like polls,” he added.
Critics of Musk’s decision also called on advertisers to take the opportunity sever ties with Twitter
“Any advertiser still funding Twitter should immediately pause all advertising,” Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, said in a statement.
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Picture: Cape{town}Etc Library