Musk: Banned Twitter users will not immediately have accounts restored

Elon Musk said that Twitter will not allow anyone banned from the social media site to have their accounts reinstated until the company sets up a “clear process” to do so.

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Musk who closed a $44 billion deal for Twitter last week, said in a tweet early Wednesday that he had spoken to several civil society leaders about enacting a procedure that “will continue to combat hate and harassment and enforce its election integrity policies.”

The decision means that people banned from the site for violating Twitter’s rules for harassment, violence, or election and COVID-related misinformation will not be able to return before Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections, according to The Associated Press.

Musk has said that people he would welcome back to the social media platform would include former President Donald Trump, whose Twitter account was suspended after the company linked his comments to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, USA Today reported.

At the time, Twitter said it made the decision “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” CNBC reported.

Musk also said that Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Musk has also said that Twitter must be “warm and welcoming to all.”

Musk met on Tuesday with leaders from the NAACP, Anti-Defamation League and Color of Change, according to the AP. Those who attended the meeting asked Musk not to reinstate banned users before the midterm elections, Jessica González, an attorney and co-CEO of the advocacy group Free Press who attended the meeting, told the news organization.

“He agreed to all of those things in our meeting, but actions speak louder than words,” González told the AP. “I’ve had a lot of meetings with tech CEOs. And I’ve been made a lot of empty promises. And with Elon Musk in particular, he’s shown himself to be inconsistent, saying one thing that one day and another thing the next. So we fully intend to hold him accountable to these promises and more.”

Musk spoke with Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League; NAACP head Derrick Johnson; and Ken Hersh, CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and a longtime financier, according to The Wall Street Journal. No group representing the LGBTQ community was present during Tuesday’s meeting, the AP reported. Twitter did not immediately reply to a request for comment on whether Musk plans to meet with one.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk’s tweets were a response to a post from Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, that said: “We’re staying vigilant against attempts to manipulate conversations about the 2022 US midterms.”

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