Musk announces 'amnesty' for suspended Twitter accounts after poll

Elon Musk has said that "amnesty" for previously suspended Twitter accounts would begin "next week," after the majority of respondents on a 24-hour poll he had posted voted in favour of the move.

The billionaire's Twitter announcement on Thursday came after he asked in a poll posted to his timeline to vote on reinstatements for accounts that have not “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.”

The yes vote was 72 percent.

"The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week," Twitter's new owner said, responding to his post asking.

Musk used the exact Latin phrase after posting a similar poll last weekend before reinstating the account of former President Donald Trump, which Twitter had banned for encouraging January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

Trump has said he won’t return to Twitter but has not deleted his account. 

Such online polls are anything but scientific and can easily be influenced by bots.

READ MORE: Donald Trump's account is back on Twitter after Musk poll

Uptick in hate speech

In the month since Musk took over Twitter, groups that monitor the platform for racist, anti-Semitic and other toxic speech say it's been on the rise on the world’s de facto public square.

That has included a surge in racist abuse of World Cup soccer players that Twitter allegedly failed to act on.

The uptick in harmful content is in large part due to the disorder following Musk's decision to lay off half the company’s 7,500-person workforce, fire top executives, and then institute a series of ultimatums that prompted hundreds more to quit, which also led to major advertisers abandoning the platform.

On October 28, the day after he took control, Musk tweeted that no suspended accounts would be reinstated until Twitter formed a "content moderation council" with diverse viewpoints that would consider the cases.

Musk has been getting increasingly chummy on Twitter with right-wing figures.

Before this month's US midterm elections, he urged "independent-minded" people to vote Republican.

READ MORE: So it wasn’t the end of Twitter. But will the blue bird soar again?