Elon Musk posts a Twitter poll asking whether Trump's account should be reinstated



Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Friday published a Twitter poll asking whether he should reinstate former President Donald Trump's account.

The poll had received more than 3 million votes from Twitter users only two hours after it was published.

None
— Matt (@Matt) 1668823080

Musk added a second tweet with the Latin phrase, "Vox Populi, Vox Dei," which means the voice of the people is the voice of God.

As of the time of publishing, 57% said that Musk should reinstate Trump, while 43% said he should not reinstate Trump.

Twitter suspended Trump's account during the rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in 2021 after saying he had violated its "civic integrity" policies. Later it permanently suspended him from the platform, and other social media sites did the same. The former president has since joined other alternative social media platforms, including Truth Social, which is run by former Republican congressman Devin Nunes.

Trump had nearly 90 million followers on Twitter before he was banned. He has about 4.5 million followers on Truth Social. He has also said that Twitter did him a favor by suspending him and promised never to return to Twitter because it was boring.

"I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH," Trump told Fox News in April. "I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH."

The former president announced his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination for 2024 days after the midterm election.

Liberals and other critics of Trump have excoriated Musk for the possibility of his reinstatement to Twitter. Among those were socialist Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who responded to Musk's poll with a sarcastic remark.

"Idk man, last time he was here this platform was used to incite an insurrection, multiple people died, the Vice President of the United States was nearly assassinated, and hundreds were injured but I guess that’s not enough for you to answer the question. Twitter poll it is," she tweeted.

Here's more about Trump's account:

Trump says he won’t come back to Twitter if Musk lifts banwww.youtube.com

HS principal on leave after comparing social media speech crackdowns to 'McCarthyism' in video message to students



The principal of a Tennessee high school is on paid administrative leave after comparing social media's speech crackdowns to "McCarthyism" during a homeroom video message to students.

What are the details?

During his nine-minute address Monday, principal Barton Thorne of Cordova High School, near Memphis, said freedom of speech is being threatened by social media and tech companies, the Commercial Appeal reported.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have all banned President Donald Trump — along with thousands of other users — in the wake of last week's U.S. Capitol riot.

WREG-TV said it obtained audio of Thorne's remarks to students during which he criticized the riot as well as the behavior of social media.

"It's what's going on with Twitter and Facebook and Google and Apple and their decision as private companies to filter and to decide what ... you hear and know about," Thorne said, according to the station.

Thorne stressed that his comments weren't about Trump but about freedom of speech, WREG reported.

"Because there have been times even in American history where a small group of people decided what you could hear. You think about McCarthyism," he said, according the station. "If you don't know about that, you can Google that or talk to your social studies teacher."

Thorne also offered broad comparisons to 1990s federal standoffs in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and in Waco, Texas, by Branch Davidians and David Koresh, the Commercial Appeal reported.

Thorne also told students that "a marketplace of free exchange of ideas" is at stake, the paper added, and that the lack of social media accountability and regulation "should be very chilling for you, that should be very frightening for you."

He did denounce the U.S. Capitol siege, calling it "ignorance at the highest level. I don't know of too many people that are going to be okay with what happened. I don't care what side you agree with, we don't practice sedition, we don't attack our legislature," the Commerical Appeal noted.

How did the school district react?

Officials of Shelby County Schools are reviewing Thorne's comments, WREG said.

"To my understanding it was a recording that was shared on our virtual platforms," Jerrica Phillips, the district's chief of communications, told the station. Phillips added to the station that she'll "have to learn more about whether or not it was an opening school message or how exactly it went out or what time of day."

WREG said Thorne's comments come at a time when SCS is working to help staff know the right way and wrong way to address politics and other issues.

"Emotionally charged situations, we have to sometimes temper back, recalibrate, think about the message we're sending to our student," Michael Lowe of the SCS Office of Equity and Access told the station. "Because Cordova is like the City of Memphis; it's made up of a salad bowl of many different students of all areas of Memphis."

District board member Sheleah Harris said the allegations are "extremely unfortunate and do not reflect the true value of" the school or the district, the Commercial Appeal reported.

"With the horrific events from last week at our U.S. Capitol, we have to ensure our children, teachers, and school staff remain in a consistent environment that promotes safety, cultural sensitivity, and represents the highest level of excellence," Harris added in a statement to the paper. "As leaders, we must be intentional about creating spaces for our students to discuss and process events that take place in our country and community."

Anything else?

The Commercial Appeal reported that Thorne on Wednesday said "individuals who are inciting violence should be removed" and that a supervisor asked him to not speak at length to the media about his speech to students and the district's investigation.

Twitter's stock plummets in first trading day after banning President Trump



Twitter's stock price plummeted more than 6% on Monday, the first day of trading since the social media giant booted President Donald Trump from its platform.

Last Friday, Twitter announced it had permanently suspended Trump's account "due to the risk of further incitement of violence" after supporters of the president stormed the U.S. Capitol in protest of the 2020 election results. In the months preceding, Trump had frequently taken to Twitter to argue that the election was fraudulent.

It was the first time that the social media company had ever banned a head of state.

Conservatives blasted the ban as an unprecedented attack on free speech; leftists lauded it as "the most important moment in the history of social media"; and on Monday, investors expressed their own concerns, putting the social media company's ticker price under pressure.

According to Yahoo! Finance, Twitter's stock opened the day down 10% before cratering to as low as $45.17 per share, or 12.3% down on the day. The stock eventually rebounded over the next several hours to end the day down 6.4%.

Business Insider reported that the early drop erased more than $5 billion from Twitter's market capitalization.

Trump's account boasted more than 88 million followers — making it one of the most popular on the platform — and his provocative tweets over the past six years generated tremendous publicity for the platform.

The recent drop in stock price likely represents investors' concerns that Twitter may soon become less competitive if supporters of the president decided to leave the platform en masse. Conservatives have long-believed that Big Tech companies like Twitter unfairly censor conservative voices and ideas.

In fact, many conservatives in recent months have been migrating over to Parler, a free speech alternative to Twitter. Though Parler was in danger of shutting down indefinitely over the weekend after Apple and Google removed Parler from their application stores and Amazon removed it from its web services due to its lack of a content moderation policy.

On Monday, Parler sued Amazon for antitrust violations.

Twitter was not the only social media company to experience a stock downturn Monday after de-platforming the president. Facebook and Google also saw their stock prices drop, though not nearly as sharply.

Leaders in Germany and France attack Twitter's move to ban President Trump, blast Big Tech for curbing free speech



Following the riots at the U.S. Capitol last week, activists put extreme pressure on social media companies to ban President Donald Trump — and some of his supporters — from their platforms.

Big Tech acquiesced, and by Friday night, Twitter had permanently banned Trump, Facebook and Instagram suspended him indefinitely, and Snapchat disabled his account. Shopify and Twitch both suspended and banned any accounts even related to President Trump. PayPal, Discord, Tiktok, YouTube, Pinterest, Google, and Apple have taken actions against Trump, his supporters, and any activities or content related to the president.

Naturally, the president has received support from well-known figures on the right — regardless of whether they were on board with his claims of massive election fraud that led to Wednesday's protests and riots — who denounced Big Tech's efforts to silence the president.

Even the ACLU came out against the de-platforming of the president.

Now the president is getting backing from a couple of unexpected places across the pond: Germany and France.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday through chief spokesman Steffen Seibert that Twitter's Trump ban is a problem and that corporations should not be messing with free speech, Fortune reported.

"The chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president as problematic," Seibert said, according to Fortune, adding that the freedom of speech "can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature — not according to a corporate decision."

Seibert added that Merkel believes the U.S. should pass regulations to restrict online incitement rather than just leaving it up to Big Tech, the Financial Times reported. He went on to say that speech should be restricted by government, not "the management of social media platforms," highlighting a difference between the U.S. approach to policing internet platforms and how the E.U. approaches the issue, as the Financial Times pointed out:

But Ms Merkel said through her spokesman that the US government should follow Germany's lead in adopting laws that restrict online incitement, rather than leaving it up to platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to make up their own rules.

The intervention highlights a key area of disagreement between the US and Europe on how to regulate social media platforms. The EU wants to give regulators more powers to force Internet platforms such as Facebook or Twitter to remove illegal content.

In the US, technology companies have traditionally been left to themselves to police their own sites, though momentum is gathering behind political moves to curtail their regulatory freedoms. Several members of Congress are working on bills which would limit the legal protections social media companies have from being sued for third party content posted on their sites.

France Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire echoed Merkel's criticism of Big Tech's anti-speech moves. Le Maire told France Inter, the Financial Times said, that he was "shocked" by Twitter's move.

"Digital regulation should not be done by the digital oligarchy itself," he said, according to a translation provided by the Financial Times, adding, "Regulation of the digital arena is a matter for the sovereign people, governments and the judiciary."

Trump tweets from other gov't accounts after being banned — Twitter deletes them and restricts the accounts



President Donald Trump attempted to tweet from other government accounts after he was banned from the social media platform, but Twitter deleted the messages and rushed to restrict the accounts.

The president was banned permanently from Twitter on Friday after the company said that there were further plans for political violence being planned by his supporters.

He tried to use the official @POTUS account and the @WhiteHouse social media account to send out a message to his followers.

"As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me," he tweeted.

"Twitter may be a private company, but without the government's gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long.I predicted this would happen. We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in their future. We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH," he added.

"They are all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some fo the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely... STAY TUNED!" the president tweeted.

While Twitter moved to immediately delete those messages, screenshots of the missives were widely circulated on Twitter.

The company had earlier given their reasoning for banning the president from their massive platform.

Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President's statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks.

They later indicated that they would not be suspending the @POTUS and the @WhiteHouse accounts, but would be restricting their use.

Some reports said that Trump had joined Parler, an alternative social media app, but that platform is also being threatened by bans from Google and Apple.

Here's more about the banning of the president from Twitter:

President Trump's Account Permanently Suspended From Twitter | NewsNOW from FOXwww.youtube.com