Elon Musk will reinstate Donald Trump's twitter profile after holding an online poll.
Donald Trump says he has no interest in returning to Twitter after Elon Musk vowed to reverse his ban.
Musk had confirmed he would reinstate the former US president’s Twitter account after putting the decision to a controversial vote.
Trump’s account, which had over 88 million followers before he was banned on January 8, 2021, quickly started gaining followers. He had accumulated nearly 1.2 million followers by this afternoon. However, some reported being unable to follow his account that evening.
However, Trump has been fairly unenthusiastic about the idea.
“I don’t see any reason for it,” the former president said via video when asked whether he planned to return to Twitter by a panel at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting, Reuters reported.
Instead, Trump would stay with his new platform Truth Social, which was developed by his Trump Media & Technology Group.
He said Truth Social was doing has better user engagement than Twitter and was doing “phenomenally well”, noting Twitter’s problems included bots and fake accounts.
Ultimately, he said the problems it faced were “incredible”.
The controversial poll about Trump’s Twitter return began on Saturday and saw roughly 52 per cent voting yes, after Musk claimed the survey was receiving 1 million votes per hour.
“Fascinating to watch Twitter Trump poll!,” Musk tweeted.
The billionaire followed with a Latin Phrase “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”, roughly translated to “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”
Musk said in May he would consider removing Trump’s indefinite Twitter ban, after he was suspended in January 2021 in the wake of the Washington DC insurrection.
After the poll ended, Musk tweeted: “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated.”
Musk is a coward. He's using "the people have spoken" as a shield to cover his desire to bring Trump back onto Twitter. And as a narcissist he doesn't give a monkeys about the will of the people.
“Three years ago when I left office … our nation was at the pinnacle of power and prestige. Striding into the future, confident and so strong,” he said.
Elon Musk enters the Twitter HQ. Photo / AP
“Everybody was thriving like never before.
The poll comes after Musk reversed the permanent Twitter bans on comedian Kathy Griffin, author Jordan Peterson and conservative satirical news website Babylon Bee.
Peterson was suspended after misgendering actor Elliot Page and the Babylon Bee was banned for misgendering an admiral for the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, Rachel Levine.
Kathy Griffin was banned on November 7 after changing her name to Elon Musk and impersonating the billionaire on the platform.
Musk’s latest move follows the decision of 1200 Twitter employees to flee the platform after the Tesla founder fired four top executives and half of the 7500-person staff.
Twitter’s new owner penned a memo on Friday to remaining employees “who actually writes software” to provide a bullet point summary of “what your code commits have achieved in the past six months.”
“Before doing so, please email me a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the past 6 months,” the email reportedly said.
“These will be short, technical interviews that allow me to better understand the Twitter tech stack.”
Musk said he would video call engineers who worked remotely but “if possible, I would encourage you to fly to San Francisco to present in person.”
Zoe Schiffer, the managing editor of Platformer who broke the news, said staff were told to provide Musk with 10 screenshots of their “most salient lines of code”.
Schiffer pointed out that many engineers have left Twitter since the takeover.
As such there are fewer staff to keep the site ticking over.
Continuing his theme of frowning on staff who work from home, Musk said he could do video calls with engineers who worked remotely but only for those “who cannot physically get to Twitter HQ”.
“If possible, I would encourage you to fly to San Francisco to present in person.”
Musk said he would be in the office until midnight on Friday.
Last week, Musk sent the remaining staff an email saying “Twitter 2.0″ was going to be “extremely hardcore,” and if they didn’t want to “work long hours at high intensity,” they should indicate they wanted to leave by Thursday.
Staff had been directed to click a link to say they agreed to the punishing conditions he laid out for “Twitter 2.0″.
