Ex-Twitter employees are horrified by Elon Musk reinstating Donald Trump’s account: ‘Incredibly upsetting’ - Fortune

president Donald Trump, who was banned from the platform in January 2021 for using it to incite the January 6 Capitol riot, could have a chilling effect on ad spend and test the content moderation team to its limits, say former Twitter staff members.

19 conference, “I don’t see any reason for it.” He added that Twitter “has a lot of problems” and “may not make it.”  However, the former president has historical precedent for saying one thing then doing another, and the temptation to return to the platform that arguably propelled him to the presidency in 2016—right as he’s making another run for the White House in 2024—might be too strong to resist.

Trump’s Twitter account, @ReadlDonaldTrump, piled back on the followers in the hours after Musk said that he would be able to return, and now stands at 83 million followers, more than he had before his January 2021 ban.

The reinstatement of Trump’s account is in direct contravention of assurances Musk gave in the immediate aftermath of his takeover of the social media giant, when he said that he was forming a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.” In that tweet, on Oct.

He and his team were earlier bombarded with questions about what Musk’s policy was on Trump’s return, with concerns from advertisers assuaged only when Twitter sales staff could point to Musk’s Oct.

“But Elon’s promise of not making decisions like that until he had convened a content moderation council before reinstating any banned users seemed to help.

The Trump question is even more vexed because Twitter has managed to significantly downsize its outsourced or contracted-out content moderation team, as well as full-time staff who would work on developing election integrity and political speech policies.