Trump gives Twitter a miss despite users voting to reactivate his account

After a slim majority voted in favour of reinstating Donald Trump’s Twitter account on Saturday, the former US president said he had no interest in returning to the social media platform.

Banned almost two years ago for using it to incite violence, new owner Elon Musk organised a poll, to which slightly more than 15-million Twitter users responded. Just over half — 51.8% — voted in favour of reinstatement.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted.

Trump’s Twitter account, which had more than 88-million followers before he was banned on January 8 2021, began accumulating followers and had nearly 100,000 followers by 10pm on Saturday.

“I don’t see any reason for it,” the former president said, adding he would stick with his new platform Truth Social, developed by his Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) start-up, which he claimed was doing “phenomenally well”. He has about 4.57-million followers on Truth Social.

Last week Musk reinstated comedian Kathy Griffin, who was banned for changing her profile name to “Elon Musk” which violated his new rule against impersonation without indicating it was a parody account. There has been no new information about the process or a promised moderation council.

A no-show by Trump could reduce concerns among major advertisers, who are already rattled by Musk’s drastic reshaping of Twitter.

He has halved the workforce and severely cut the company’s trust and safety team, which is responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation and harmful content. These actions and Musk’s tweeting have pushed major companies to halt advertising on the site as they monitor how the platform handles hate speech.

On Saturday, Bloomberg reported Twitter could fire more employees in its sales and partnership divisions, citing unnamed sources, just days after a mass resignation of engineers. 

Reuters