Elon Musk restores Trump’s Twitter account: why and since when was it closed?
Former President Donald Trump’s account was reinstated on Saturday after an online poll from Musk voted in favour of his return.
On Friday evening new Twitter owner Elon Musk announced that he would be reinstating the account of former President Trump, nearly two years after he was banned for violating community guidelines.
The move came after a 24-hour poll posted by Musk on his Twitter account, asked whether people wanted Trump to return. The poll drew more than 15 million votes in a single day, with 51.8% of those responding saying that they wanted Trump back.
It is a hugely significant change on the platform and one that speaks to Musk’s intentions going forward. Shortly after tweeted the result, Musk added that “Twitter is ALIVE”, referring to the huge amount of buzz generated by the poll and the announcement.
Given that Musk is under severe pressure to make the company more profitable, he appears willing to push for greater interactions on the site wherever possible.
Why was Donald Trump banned from Twitter?
Trump’s absence on the platform goes back to early 2021, in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol by the former President’s supporters. Five people lost their lives that day and Trump’s violent rhetoric and refusal to call back his supporters were blamed for the chaos.
Trump’s account was hit with a temporary block, having already been subjected to ‘Fact Check’ labels on misleading tweets. After two subsequent tweets that were judged to violate the company policy on the glorification of violence, Twitter took the decision to suspend the account due to fears of further incitement of violence.
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“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter said at the time.
“In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action.”
Trump has not yet made use of his newly-available Twitter account, but has already received more than 25 million new followers.