Elon Musk May Have a Point About Donald Trump?s Twitter Ban

But on Tuesday, he said that Twitter should still suppress tweets or temporarily suspend accounts “if they say something that is illegal or otherwise just, you know, destructive to the world.” In case that was too precise, he added, “If there are tweets that are wrong and bad, those should be either deleted or made invisible, and a suspension—a temporary suspension—is appropriate, but not a permanent ban.” If anything, deleting tweets that are “wrong and bad” suggests a broader, more easily abused standard of content moderation than Twitter currently deploys. Especially since rule violations by someone in Trump’s position are more dangerous than by some random Twitter user.Getting rid of permanent bans offers one way to square these seemingly incompatible positions: In general, don’t hand out lifetime bans for average users or political figures. “And in some ways, they’re going to be more harmful for the average user than for a really powerful politician who is always going to be able to get their message out.”Indeed, Trump recently claimed that he won’t return to Twitter even if reinstated, and will instead use his own Twitter-clone platform, Truth Social. Social platforms have always been his on-ramp to mainstream media.” (He said this on Twitter, of course, thus ensuring that I, a degenerate Twitter-addicted journalist, would come across it.)Twitter would do well to rethink its use of permanent bans whether or not Trump returns.