Elon Musk stated on Wednesday that unless Twitter establishes policies for how to accomplish that, a process that would take at least a few weeks, it will not permit anyone who has been banned from the site to return.
That would imply that individuals barred from the website for breaking Twitter’s policies on harassment, violence, and spreading false information about elections and COVID would not be permitted to return before next Tuesday’s midterm elections in the United States.
The declaration followed Musk’s announcement in a tweet that he had met with a number of civil society leaders “about how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies.” Musk purchased the social media platform for $44 billion last week and assumed control of it.
According to Jessica González, an attorney and co-CEO of the advocacy group Free Press who attended the meeting on Tuesday, many present requested Musk not to reinstate the blocked users before the midterm elections.
Leaders from the NAACP, Anti-Defamation League, and Color of Change were among the speakers.
They also demanded that Twitter have a transparent approach on how it planned to restore accounts. Trump, who frequently promotes his own platform Truth Social, has not indicated if he will return, despite Musk having publicly stated that he would let him to rejoin the website.
The attendees, according to González, also asked Twitter to enforce existing election-integrity procedures and urged him to hear from a variety of people, including racial minorities and those who have been the targets of hate and harassment campaigns.
“He agreed to all of those things in our meeting, but actions speak louder than words,” González said.
For its part, the NAACP stated in a statement that it spoke with Musk about its worries regarding “the dangerous, life-threatening bigotry and conspiracies that have spread on Twitter” while he was in charge of the platform.
The group claimed failure to act will “place human lives at risk and further unravel our democracy,” adding that any account that spreads false information about elections should not be permitted on the site, citing a report about a surge in hate speech on Twitter in the hours after Musk’s takeover.
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