Elon Musk Calls Twitter's Prohibition Against Donald Trump's Account A Big Error

Former US President Donald Trump. (photo: twitter @realdonaldtrump)

JAKARTA - Twitter's ban on President Donald Trump following the January 6, 2021 attacks on the US Capitol, has been cited by supporters as a "big mistake" that must be corrected.

This was also confirmed by Twitter's Chief Executive, Elon Musk, on Friday, November 25. However, the new Twitter owner also stated that incitement to violence will continue to be banned on the microblogging platform.

"I'm fine with Trump not tweeting. What's important is that Twitter corrects a huge mistake in banning its account, even though there are no violations of the law or service provisions," Musk said in a tweet. "Revocationing the President's sitting platform undermines public trust on Twitter for half of America."

Last week, Musk announced the reactivation of Trump's account after a narrow majority who voted in a Twitter poll supported Trump's account recovery. But the former US president himself said, however, that he was not interested in returning to Twitter.

He also added that he would continue to use his own social media site, Truth Social, an app developed by Trump Media & Technology Group.

Republican Trump, who announced 10 days ago that he would nominate again in the 2024 US presidential election, was banned on Twitter on January 8, 2021, under the control of his previous management.

At the time, Twitter said it had permanently suspended it due to the risk of further incitement to violence following the Capitol raid. The results of the November 2020 presidential election won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden was approved by lawmakers when the Capitol was attacked after weeks of false claims by Trump that he had won.

Trump has repeatedly used Twitter and other sites and mistakenly claims there has been widespread voter fraud, and has urged supporters to march on the Capitol in Washington to protest.

The attack itself is currently being investigated by US prosecutors and congressional committees.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment last Friday over Musk's statement that Trump did not violate any Twitter service requirements when his account was suspended.

Earlier on Friday, Musk tweeted that calling for violence or incitement to violence on Twitter would result in suspension, after saying last Thursday that Twitter would provide "public amnesty" for suspended accounts that do not violate the law or engage in spam.

In response to the tweet, Musk said it was "very concerning" that Twitter had not taken any previous action to remove some accounts linked to the far left of the Antifa movement.

In response to another tweet asking if Musk thought the "transperson deserves to die" statement as worthy to be suspended from the platform, the billionaire said: "Of course".

Change and chaos have marked Musk's first few weeks as Twitter owner. He has fired the top manager and it was announced that senior officials in charge of security and privacy had stopped.