Even before his Twitter purchase, Musk announced that he wanted to reactivate the account of the ex-US President Trump. In a first reaction, he welcomes the acquisition of the platform by the Tesla boss. However, he remains vague as to whether he will return.
Former US President Donald Trump, who was banned from Twitter, sees the social media platform “in sensible hands” with billionaire Elon Musk. Trump wrote this on his new online platform Truth Social. He left open whether he would return to Twitter after the takeover, from where his account was permanently banned after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in early 2021 in the last days of his term.
But he believes that Truth Social looks and works better: “I LOVE TRUTH,” Trump wrote ambiguously. The English “Truth” means “Truth” in German. The Republican president used numerous tweets to explain his policies during his tenure.
In the wake of the $44 billion takeover tug-of-war, Musk said he would reactivate Trump’s account. But the ex-president declined. On Truth Social, however, the 76-year-old has a fraction of the 89 million followers who subscribed to his statements on Twitter.
Musk initially commented on the purchase, which ended a month-long takeover thriller, with a short tweet: “The bird is free,” wrote the head of the electric car manufacturer Tesla and the richest person in the world, looking at the Twitter logo. Later he added to the address of his more than 110 million Twitter followers: “Let the good times roll”, loosely translated as: “Let’s have fun”.
Critics fear that Musk could drastically scale back content moderation to fight hate speech, online bullying and the spread of misinformation. The pugnacious entrepreneur presents himself as a radical advocate of the right to freedom of speech and has in the past accused Twitter of restricting freedom of expression.
