Twitter’s new head of Trust and Safety has announced that a “general amnesty” review of suspended user accounts will be completed within around 30 days, with the announcement coming around a month after Twitter CEO Elon Musk pledged to start reinstating banned accounts that hadn’t broken the law or engaged in “egregious spam.”
The thread, from an account called A New Radical Centrism (@newradcentrism), noted that a number of accounts—including Monitoring Bias (@monitoringbias) and journalist Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer)—had been suspended for posting accurate crime statistics.
One of the accounts was locked over a post that corrected the percentage of U.S. homicides committed by blacks from 53 percent to 60.4 percent, according to a screengrab shared by A New Radical Centrism.
“Ultimately, I don’t see a clear path for effectively debating Wokeness if emerging accounts who argue with data are getting suspended. Hope this gets corrected,” The Rabbit Hole account wrote.
Irwin replied to this post, saying that the Twitter team has been busy reviewing thousands of locked accounts since Musk vowed to press ahead with a general amnesty.
Accounts Reactivated
Several of the banned accounts—including Monitoring Bias—have been reactivated since Irwin announced the 30-day timeframe.The account has since been reinstated.
The Twitter head of trust and safety also responded to a tweet that argued it’s “time to change the system that bans” accounts in the first place.
‘The People Have Spoken’
About a month after Musk took over Twitter in October, he ran an online poll asking whether accounts banned for reasons other than for breaking the law or posting “egregious spam” should be granted a “general amnesty.”Over 70 percent of the 3 million-plus people who voted said “yes.”
Musk ran the poll shortly after he reinstated a number of suspended accounts, including former President Donald Trump’s.
Prior to reactivating Trump’s account, which has nearly 88 million followers, the former president had been locked out for two years.
Trump has yet to post anything on Twitter, however, with his last post being from Jan. 8, 2021: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
The former president has since launched his own social media platform, Truth Social, where he posts regularly.
Doxxing Policy Violations
Musk sparked controversy in mid December when he suspended a half dozen or so journalists’ accounts that shared his real-time location or linked to sites that did the doxxing.Prior to the suspension of the journalists’ accounts (which have since been restored), Musk had been concerned about an account (@ElonJet) that was sharing his private jet movements, citing a risk to his safety.
The @ElonJet account has been suspended under Twitter’s new doxxing policy, along with a number of other accounts sharing private jet location information, including for Jeff Bezos’s and Mark Zuckerberg’s personal planes.
Some of the journalists disputed the claim that they had exposed Musk’s location in real time in violation of Twitter’s new anti-doxxing policy.
Rupar’s account has since been restored.
In much the same vein as with the “general amnesty,” Musk polled Twitter users whether he should reinstate suspended accounts of journalists who he said had doxxed his real-time location.
The majority of respondents voted for an immediate reinstatement.
“The people have spoken,” Musk said in response. “Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.”