Trump supporters have been left dismayed on social media after it was announced by Twitter on Sunday, April 10, that new shareholder Elon Musk will not take a board seat, dashing the possible hope of the reinstatement of banned user and former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Musk, who bought a 9.2 percent stake in the company sometime in March, and has, over the weekend since the announcement of the stake, asked for input on ideas that could be implemented inside of Twitter, according to the Daily Beast.
“Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” he said in a tweet. Many in the right believed at the time that it signaled that he may unban Donald Trump, who was banned for inciting violence after the Capitol Insurrection, from the platform
While Musk has not responded in regards to these ideas given by many conservatives, Twitter itself has been adamant that it will uphold the policies it has put forward and that Musk himself will not be the deciding factor in any of these decisions.
“Twitter is committed to impartiality in the development and enforcement of its policies and rules,” a Twitter spokesperson said. “Our policy decisions are not determined by the Board or shareholders, and we have no plans to reverse any policy decisions.”
Although an unusual move, many corporate analysts, as well as former officials in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said that Musk’s board seat reversal was not necessarily illegal or breaking the rules, Reuters reported.
“Merely being extended an offer to join the offer to board, contemplating doing so and deciding not to is not a violation of securities laws,” Jacob Frenkel, former enforcement attorney at the SEC, said.
Regardless of the legality of the move, Musk’s refusal to take a board seat has stymied many conservative users’ hopes of the return of Trump and other similarly-banned personalities on the platform, an ideology which Musk has flirted with in the past, according to the Independent.
Many hope that he will still be able to influence the platform to help pivot it towards conservative views.
“I sense one day [Musk’s] gonna walk into work—he’s gonna walk into work one day and he’s gonna say ‘I’m gonna start using my power. I bought more of it. Donald Trump is back on the line, I put all these people back on,’” Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade.
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