misc. 148: A Little Bird Told Me!!

The Twitter account of former US President Donald Trump was back up again after the social media company’s new owner Elon Musk tweeted that the account will be reinstated.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,’ Musk tweeted Saturday.

Musk had run an online poll asking whether Trump’s account should be reinstated on Twitter. In the poll that received 15,085,458 votes, 51.8 per cent voted yes and 48.2 per cent were against reinstating the former US President’s Twitter account.

Trump’s Twitter account appeared to be back as of Saturday evening and the last tweet was dated January 8, 2021 in which Trump had said, “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

Trump was permanently suspended from the social media site in January 2021, just days after the attempted insurrection by pro-Trump supporters at the US Capitol.

Twitter’s top lawyer, Indian-American Vijaya Gadde was at the forefront of the dramatic decision to suspend the former US President’s Twitter account. Gadde had tweeted that the “account of @realDonaldTrump has been permanently suspended from Twitter due to the risk of further violence. We’ve also published our policy enforcement analysis – you can read more about our decision here”, linking to a Twitter blogpost about the company’s decision to permanently suspend Trump’s Twitter account through which he communicated to his more than 88 million followers.

Gadde, CEO Parag Agrawal, legal executive Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and General Counsel Sean Edgett were among the top Twitter executives fired by Musk immediately after he took control of the social media company following a 44 billion dollar acquisition.

At the time when Trump’s Twitter account was reinstated, it showed that he had one million followers and that number quickly grew to 2.1 million in just under 30 minutes.

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