Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Livemint
Livemint
National
Livemint

Elon Musk floats 'general amnesty' of suspended Twitter accounts

New Twitter Chief Elon Musk (AFP)

The move comes as Musk has faced pushback that his criteria for content moderation are subject to his personal whim, with reinstatements decided for certain accounts and not others.

"Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?" Musk asked in a tweet.

Trump's Twitter account was reinstated Saturday after a narrow majority of respondents supported the move.

Polls on Twitter are open to all users and are unscientific and potentially targeted by fake accounts and bots.

According to the AFP News Agency, a blanket decision on suspended accounts could potentially alarm government authorities that are keeping a close look at Musk's handling of hateful speech since he bought the influential platform for $44 billion.

It could also spook Apple and Google, tech titans that have the power to ban Twitter from their mobile app stores over content concerns.

Trump was banned from the platform early last year for his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Musk, who closed his buyout of Twitter in late October, did not make clear whether the bans to be covered by the poll were permanent suspensions or temporary ones.

Separately, Musk has reportedly told his employees that the company would encrypt DMs and work to add encrypted video and voice calling between accounts.

"We want to enable users to be able to communicate without being concerned about their privacy, [or] being concerned about a data breach at Twitter causing all of their DMs to hit the web, or think that maybe someone at Twitter could be spying on their DMs. That's obviously not going to be cool and it has happened a few times before," Musk said, the outlet reported.

The richest man in the world also went on to say that "we also want to have the ability to do voice and video chat via DMs."

In 2018, Twitter warned that an undisclosed number of DMs between businesses and their customers had been accessible by outsiders for over a year.

Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
More Less
Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.