Why Donald Trump’s Twitter account has been restored

The people have spoken.

Trump will be reinstated.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei. https://t.co/jmkhFuyfkv

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2022

Around the time that Musk took over Twitter in October, rapper Kanye West, who was banned from the platform for making antisemitic remarks, also had his account reinstated.

Why was Trump banned from Twitter?

Twitter banned Trump after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol last year saying his posts were “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol”. He was subsequently also banned from Facebook, Instagram and YouTube after the riot. On Twitter, Trump had asked his supporters to “fight like hell”.

It was an overnight reversal of the tech companies’ policy on Trump, and other political leaders, which has largely been one of symbiotic association where both parties were benefitting from each other. Most of these companies thrive around the amplification of spectacle, as Prof Ramesh Srinivasan of the Department of Information Studies at UCLA puts it.

Trump, provided the spectacle almost daily, allowing platforms such as Twitter the chance to amplify it for assured traffic. In banning him, Twitter and Facebook clearly responded to growing calls for coercive action against them for having allowed the President to peddle lies and hate on their platforms during his tenure.

Why was Trump’s Twitter account restored?

On Saturday (November 19), Musk started a poll on Twitter, asking if Trump’s account should be reinstated. The poll received over 15 million responses, with a slim majority of 51.8 per cent accounts saying that his account should be restored. However, it is worth noting that by Musk’s own admission, over 134 million people saw the poll, meaning that only about 11 per cent of them participated in it.

Notably, Musk himself suggested that the poll was being attacked by bots, which are not operated by people. The alleged presence of bots was among the key factors that Musk had earlier relied on to pull out of his $44 billion bid to buy Twitter. During that rocky phase of his Twitter buyout, in May, Musk had suggested that he would restore Trump’s account. “I do think that it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” said Musk in May. “I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice… So I guess the answer is I would reverse the permaban.”

It is unclear whether Trump, once an irrepressible tweeter, would start posting on the platform again. His last tweet is from January 8 – when his account was banned – where he said that he would not be attending the ceremony of his successor Joe Biden. Since then, Trump has joined Truth Social, a conservative social media company developed by a firm founded by the former president. Following Musk’s comments on allowing him to rejoin Twitter, Trump said he would stay on Truth Social regardless of whether he was invited back. “Twitter’s become very boring. They’ve gotten rid of a lot of good voices on Twitter, a lot of their conservative voices,” said Trump at the time.