By MATT O'BRIEN, KELVIN CHAN and TOM KR­ISH­ER-As­so­ci­at­ed Press 

On Tues­day, Elon Musk said he would re­verse Twit­ter’s ban of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who was boot­ed in Jan­u­ary 2021 for in­cit­ing vi­o­lence at the U.S. Capi­tol, should he suc­ceed in ac­quir­ing the so­cial plat­form for $44 bil­lion. 

But the day be­fore, the Tes­la CEO al­so said he agrees with the Eu­ro­pean Union’s new Dig­i­tal Ser­vices Act, a law that will re­quire big tech com­pa­nies like Twit­ter, Google and Face­book par­ent Meta to po­lice their plat­forms more strict­ly for il­le­gal or harm­ful con­tent such as hate speech and dis­in­for­ma­tion. 

The ap­par­ent con­tra­dic­tion un­der­scores the steep learn­ing curve await­ing the world’s rich­est man once he en­coun­ters the com­plex­i­ty of Twit­ter’s con­tent mod­er­a­tion in dozens of lan­guages and cul­tures. Twit­ter has to com­ply with the laws and reg­u­la­tions of mul­ti­ple coun­tries while tak­ing in­to ac­count the re­ac­tion of ad­ver­tis­ers, users, politi­cians and oth­ers. 

“He cer­tain­ly wouldn’t be the first per­son to say, ‘I’m go­ing to do this’ and then re­al­ize that ei­ther they don’t re­al­ly want to do it or their users don’t want them to do it,” said David Greene, civ­il lib­er­ties di­rec­tor at the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. 

Speak­ing vir­tu­al­ly at an au­to con­fer­ence, the Tes­la CEO said that Twit­ter’s ban of Trump was a “moral­ly bad de­ci­sion” and “fool­ish in the ex­treme.” 

“I think that was a mis­take be­cause it alien­at­ed a large part of the coun­try and did not ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult in Don­ald Trump not hav­ing a voice,” said Musk. He said he pre­ferred tem­po­rary sus­pen­sions and oth­er nar­row­ly tai­lored pun­ish­ments for con­tent that is il­le­gal or oth­er­wise “de­struc­tive to the world.” 

Ear­li­er in the day, Musk met with EU In­ter­nal Mar­ket Com­mis­sion­er Thier­ry Bre­ton to dis­cuss the bloc’s on­line reg­u­la­tions. Thier­ry told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that he out­lined to Musk how the EU aims to up­hold free speech while al­so mak­ing sure what­ev­er is il­le­gal “will be for­bid­den in the dig­i­tal space,” adding that Musk “ful­ly agreed” with him. 

In a video Bre­ton tweet­ed late Mon­day, Musk said the two had a “great dis­cus­sion” and added that he agrees with the Dig­i­tal Ser­vices Act, which is ex­pect­ed to get fi­nal ap­proval lat­er this year. It threat­ens Twit­ter and oth­er Big Tech firms with bil­lions in fines if they don’t po­lice their plat­forms. 

Shares of Twit­ter dropped 1.5% Tues­day to $47.24 per share. That’s 13 per­cent be­low the of­fer of $54.20 per share that Musk made on April 14, a re­flec­tion of Wall Street’s con­cerns that the deal could still fall through. Musk em­pha­sized Tues­day that it is “cer­tain­ly not a done deal.” 

“If Musk is con­cerned that many peo­ple were up­set that Trump was banned, he should see how many more peo­ple would be up­set if Trump was not banned,” said Kirsten Mar­tin, a pro­fes­sor of tech­nol­o­gy ethics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame. “Musk on­ly ap­pears to be wor­ried about the opin­ion of a small group of in­di­vid­u­als who in­cite vi­o­lence or per­pet­u­ate hate speech.” 

Trump has pre­vi­ous­ly said that he had no in­ten­tion of re­join­ing Twit­ter even if his ac­count was re­in­stat­ed, telling Fox News last month that he would in­stead fo­cus on his own plat­form, Truth So­cial, which has been mired in prob­lems since its launch ear­li­er this year. 

A Trump spokesper­son did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment in re­sponse to Musk’s re­marks. 

While Trump was pres­i­dent, his Twit­ter feed of­fered a mix of pol­i­cy an­nounce­ments, of­ten out of the blue; com­plaints about the me­dia; dis­par­age­ment of women, mi­nori­ties and his per­ceived en­e­mies; and praise for his sup­port­ers, re­plete with ex­cla­ma­tion marks, all-caps, and one-word de­c­la­ra­tions such as “Sad!” 

He fired nu­mer­ous of­fi­cials on Twit­ter and his posts, like his speech­es at ral­lies, were a tor­rent of mis­in­for­ma­tion. 

In an­nounc­ing its 2021 ban of Trump, Twit­ter said his tweets amount­ed to glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of vi­o­lence when read in the con­text of the Jan. 6 Capi­tol ri­ot and plans cir­cu­lat­ing on­line for fu­ture armed protests around the in­au­gu­ra­tion of then Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden. 

Musk’s re­marks Tues­day raise ques­tions about whether those banned be­sides Trump could al­so re­turn. The long list of peo­ple banned from Twit­ter in­cludes QAnon loy­al­ists, COVID de­niers, neo-Nazis and for­mer re­al­i­ty star Tila Tequi­la, who was sus­pend­ed for hate speech. 

Oth­er Trump al­lies kicked off Twit­ter in­clude Michael Fly­nn and Sid­ney Pow­ell, Lin Wood and Rep. Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene, who was per­ma­nent­ly banned in Jan­u­ary for re­peat­ed­ly spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion about COVID-19 and vac­cine safe­ty. 

White su­prema­cist David Duke and the of­ten vi­o­lent Proud Boys or­ga­ni­za­tion have been banned, along with far-right trolls like one who goes by the name Baked Alas­ka, who pro­mot­ed an­ti-Se­mit­ic tropes and faces charges stem­ming from his in­volve­ment in the Jan. 6 at­tack. 

Alex Jones, the cre­ator of In­fowars, was per­ma­nent­ly banned in 2018 for abu­sive be­hav­ior. Last year, Jones lost a defama­tion case filed by the par­ents of chil­dren killed in the 2012 New­town, Con­necti­cut, school shoot­ing over Jones’ re­peat­ed claims that the shoot­ing was fake. 

Twit­ter, Musk said Tues­day, cur­rent­ly has a strong bias to the left, large­ly be­cause it is lo­cat­ed in San Fran­cis­co. This al­leged bias pre­vents it from build­ing trust in the rest of the U.S. and the world, he said: “It’s far too ran­dom and I think Twit­ter needs to be much more even hand­ed.” 

Twit­ter de­clined to com­ment on Musk’s re­marks.