The potential return to Twitter of former U.S. 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.
On Nov. 18, Elon Musk—who bought Twitter in late October for $44 billion—tweeted a poll of the platform’s users asking whether he should reinstate Trump’s account. When the poll closed overnight on November 19, more than 15 million people had voted. Musk claimed that 134 million of Twitter’s quarter billion users had seen the poll.
