Is Elon Musk About to Grant Suspended Twitter Accounts a General Amnesty?
plus: a warm response on Twitter to my get-out-of-twitter-jail campaign
Twitter’s pre-Musk moderation regime had no qualms about censoring voices on the right, as well as voices questioning Covid policies, while it conspicuously gave leftists, in particular Woke leftists, a free pass to promote their worldviews and values virtually unimpeded by censorship, and gave proponents of pandemic restrictions a free pass to misrepresent and distort the evidence around PCR testing, vaccine safety and efficacy, and lockdowns.
There are some promising indications that Elon Musk may be seriously committed to restoring free speech on Twitter. He has moved to restore a number of high profile accounts that had been permanently banned, including those of Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, and the Babylon Bee. Admittedly, he has not yet committed to undertaking a systematic review of suspended accounts. Instead, up to now he has offered a sort of “presidential pardon,” on a case by case basis, of suspended accounts that have come to his attention.
However, one of Musk’s latest Twitter polls, tweeted out on the 23rd of November, may be a game changer. It gives us a tantalizing glance of how Musk may be planning to address the problem of permanent suspensions inflicted by his predecessors for political and ideological reasons.
In that poll, Musk asks, “Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” At the time of writing (evening of 23rd November), the poll has had over a million responses, with an overwhelming majority of responses (73%) in favour of the amnesty.
It is noticeable that several important decisions that Musk has made have been preceded by a Twitter poll, most notably the decision to purchase Twitter, and the decision to reverse Donald Trump’s suspension.
It does not really matter whether Musk actually feels he is bound by the outcome of these polls. The point is that he has used polls in the past as a way to “test the waters” of public sentiment on policies he is considering implementing. So there is probably more than an even chance that a “general amnesty” for suspended accounts (including mine) that operated within the law will become a reality in the near future.
While there is no guarantee that an amnesty will be offered, Musk’s recent poll does put the idea firmly on the table, and offer a realistic hope that we may be on the home stretch toward a much freer digital public sphere than what we had under Twitter’s previous management.
This newly emerging hope is a breath of fresh air to those of us who were repeatedly silenced by rules that were consistently interpreted to favour the interests of Big Pharma, Big Government, and Woke activists.
Just today, prior to Musk’s amnesty poll, I began a Twitter campaign to implore Musk to review bans on relatively small accounts (say, accounts with under 100,000 followers), including mine.
The first video in this campaign has already received a warm and enthusiastic response from thousands of Twitter users. I am immensely grateful for the support I have received for my public appeal. At the time of writing (23rd November), the video in question has already received over 58,000 views, 1,800 retweets, and 5,000 likes (feel free to click on the message below and re-tweet it if you agree).
I would be delighted if Mr Musk rendered my appeal on behalf of suspended accounts moot by publicly confirming his intention to grant a general amnesty for suspended accounts. I guess we’ll find out soon…
The Freedom Blog depends on readers like you to keep sharing news and arguments Big Tech and Big Media prefer to hide from you. Here are three ways you can support my work in defence of a free society:
Upgrade to a paid monthly or annual subscription to my Freedom Blog (unlocking subscriber-exclusive content).
Share my blog posts with family and friends, and on your social media channels.
Sign up to my Youtube, Rumble and Telegram channels. You can also follow me on Spotify.
RESPONSES SO FAR TO MY GET-OUT-OF-TWITTER-JAIL CAMPAIGN
I’ve had a terrific response from a lot of people on Twitter, including some people with large followings who have kindly helped me out by re-tweeting my video appeal. I’ll close with a few samples of the kind responses I’ve had so far on Twitter:
Could you please share this Censorship campaign on Twitter and tag Elon Musk?
#reinstate.... tag the people you want reinstated.
https://abirballan.substack.com/p/think-twice-censorship-campaign
Even though I’m not a twitter user, I understand it is a powerful platform and I really hope your appeal to Mr. Musk is successful, and that it helps you and the thousands of other wrongfully dismissed voices of truth and reason.