Elon Musk says those banned from Twitter won’t be allowed back on for a ‘few more weeks’

On Wednesday, Elon Musk confirmed that “Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks.”

The billionaire Twitter owner had previously said he would start a “content moderation council,” and that no significant decisions would be made until it was setup.

Musk added that his new council “will include representatives with widely divergent views, which will certainly include the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence.”

Musk said on Wednesday he had met up with some representatives from the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Color of Change, the Asian American Foundation and several other groups in order to discuss “how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies.”

On Tuesday, Twitter head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth said that Twitter has been “focused on addressing the surge in hateful conduct on Twitter. We’ve made measurable progress, removing more than 1500 accounts and reducing impressions on this content to nearly zero.”

Both Musk and Roth said that none of Twitter’s policies have changed since the takeover.

Many people believe Musk will be reinstating former President Donald Trump’s account. He suggested that he might back in May.

“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake,” Musk said. “I would reverse the perma-ban. … But my opinion, and Jack Dorsey, I want to be clear, shares this opinion, is that we should not have perma-bans.”

Trump himself said that he is happy Twitter is now in “sane hands” following the Musk takeover but claimed he would not be returning to the platform.

“I don’t lose anything,” Trump said. “In other words, you know, they want to put me on very badly, they’ve called and they want me to go back on. But if I go on there, what would happen to Truth? I don’t know…But the answer is, I’m not doing it. I won’t go back on.”