Musk’s remarks at the Future of the Car conference of the Financial Times marked his first public acknowledgment of what was expected since the billionaire announced plans to buy the social media giant for $ 44 billion.
Musk has previously said he believes Twitter should be more “reluctant to delete things” and “very cautious with permanent bans.” On Tuesday, he called Twitter’s decision to ban Trump in January 2021 a “mistake.”
“I don’t think it was right to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake,” Musk said. “I would lift the permanent ban … But my opinion and that of Jack Dorsey, I want to be clear, is that we should not have permanent bans.”
Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and former CEO, tweeted Tuesday after Musk’s remarks that he “agrees” that there should be no permanent bans on Twitter users. “There are exceptions … but in general, permanent bans are our failure and do not work,” he said.
Twitter declined to comment on Musk’s remarks.
Trump was finally removed from Twitter after the January 6 Capitol riot for violating the platform’s rules against incitement to violence, a decision the company said was led by Dorsey. Other social platforms followed the ban or suspension of Trump’s account. Trump, for his part, said he would not return to Twitter even if his account was restored, instead promoting his own venture on social media, Truth Social, which so far appears to be struggling to get out of the ground.
“Trump’s ban on Twitter did not end Trump’s vote, it will strengthen him among the right, and that is why it is morally wrong and completely stupid,” Musk said at Tuesday’s event.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has admitted that his acquisition of Twitter and the return of Trump have not yet been a deal. “I will say that I do not own Twitter yet, so this is not something that will definitely happen, because what will happen if I do not own Twitter?” He said.
Some questions remain about whether Musk will really handle the deal or whether the decline in Tesla’s shares (TSLA) over the past month could negatively affect his ability to finance the deal. Shares of Twitter (TWTR) traded around $ 47.70 on Tuesday afternoon, well below Musk’s bid price of $ 54.20 per share, suggesting some skepticism among investors about the likelihood of the deal closing. But that hasn’t stopped Musk from continuing to set out his plans for the platform in recent weeks. Musk said his goal is to increase freedom of speech on the platform and make it clearer to users when the platform takes action that affects what people see on Twitter.
On Tuesday, he reiterated his desire to rid Twitter of bots promoting spam or fraud and his plan to make Twitter’s algorithm publicly available to anyone who views and comments on it.
“I would literally put Twitter’s algorithm on GitHub and say, ‘Hey, does anyone want to suggest a change in this?’ Please continue, “Musk said, adding that he saw such a move as a way to” build transparency and trust. “
He also criticized what he considered Twitter’s political bias, echoing the claims of some prominent figures on the right.
“I think Twitter needs to be much more even. He is currently strongly left-leaning because he is based in San Francisco, “he said. “I don’t think the people there necessarily intend to, or at least some of them don’t intend to be left-leaning. They just, from their point of view, seem moderate, but they just come after him from an environment that is very left-wing. “
(Twitter has previously said that its algorithms and employees do not discriminate against any particular political point of view.)
In addition to lifting Trump’s ban, Musk said he would make permanent bans “extremely rare” by keeping them for “bots or spam, fraudulent accounts where there is simply no legitimacy for the account.”
Musk has also broadened his vision for moderating Twitter content. Earlier, Musk said Twitter intended to limit moderation of its content to what governments considered explicitly illegal – and not go much further.
But on Tuesday, Musk acknowledged that there could be a wide range of spam that he would like Twitter to push against. In addition to illegal content, Musk identified two other categories of content that could be subject to sanctions: speech that is “destructive to the world” and “wrong and bad.”
“If they say something that is illegal or otherwise just destructive to the world, then maybe there should be a wait, a suspension, or this particular tweet should be made invisible or there should be very limited traction,” Musk said. He added: “I think that if there are tweets that are wrong and bad, they should be either deleted or made invisible, and stopping, temporary stopping is appropriate, but not a permanent ban.”
Musk did not say what metrics Twitter could use to determine if a tweet could be “wrong and bad” or “destructive to the world” and when it could choose one type of punishment over another.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly indicated the date of Trump’s ban on Twitter. It was January 2021.
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