Elon Musk said Thursday that Twitter will offer a “general amnesty” to suspended accounts starting next week, doing so for users who haven’t broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.
Of the more than 3.16 million users who participated in a poll Musk posted on Twitter on Wednesday, 72.4% voted in favor of bringing back people who had been suspended by the social media platform.
“The people have spoken,” Musk, who acquired Twitter last month, tweeted on Thursday. “The apology starts next week.”
Last week, Musk, the world’s richest man, reinstated some previously suspended accounts, including former US President Donald Trump, the satirical website Babylon Bee and comedian Kathy Griffin.
He tweeted in October that Twitter would create a content moderation council “with widely diverse viewpoints”. Musk said there would be no major material decisions or account restorations before the council convened.
Change and chaos have marked the billionaire’s first few weeks as Twitter owner. He fired top managers, including former chief executive Parag Agarwal, and it was announced that senior officials in charge of security and privacy had resigned.
Those resignations prompted an investigation from the US Federal Trade Commission, whose mandate includes protecting consumers and which said it was watching Twitter with “deep concern”.
Earlier Thursday, Musk tweeted that Twitter users could see small, sometimes large, improvements in the platform’s speed that would be significant in countries far from the United States.