While at the Financial Times Future of the Car conference, Musk received a direct question about Trump’s reinstatement. In response, the CEO said, “I guess the answer is that, I would reverse the permaban,” an opinion he shares with Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey. Both Musk and Dorsey believe that permanent bans (permabans) should only apply to bots and spam accounts. However, the Tesla CEO was quick to offer a caveat, saying, “I don’t own Twitter yet, so this is not, like, a thing that will definitely happen.”
Musk recently met with the European Commissioner for Internal Market to discuss Twitter’s compliance with regulations
The entire conference was available via livestream on YouTube, and is now available in its entirety. So there’s nothing left to ambiguity. “I spoke with Jack Dorsey about this and he and I are of the same mind which is that permanent bans should be extremely rare and we would reserve [them] for accounts that are bots or spam/scam accounts, where there’s no legitimacy to be accountable,” Musk said (via The Verge). He further said that banning the former president was a mistake, adding that it “alienated a large part of the country, and did not result in Donald Trump not having a voice.” Musk then took a subtle jibe at Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social. In closing, he quoted the former president saying that he doesn’t want to come back to Twitter. Trump’s Twitter suspension came two days after the U.S. Capitol attacks on Jan 6, 2021. In related news, the SpaceX CEO recently met with the European Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton. Musk assured the EU that Twitter will continue to comply with its regulations, adding that his plans for the platform are “exactly aligned” with the EU’s regulations.
