(Bloomberg) — Permanently banning a person from a service such as Twitter is a “bad outcome,” according to Nick Pickles, senior public policy executive at the social media platform.
“Permanently removing people’s access to services is, generally speaking, a bad outcome,” he said. “What does the solution to that look like? And I think we’re a long way away from figuring it out.”
Speaking at an event titled “Twitter: power and responsibility” put on by a college at Cambridge University late Wednesday, Pickles was responding to an audience question on whether figures like former U.S. President Donald Trump could be allowed back on the social media platform.
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Twitter Inc. last year permanently banned Trump’s personal account for breaking its rules against glorifying violence, marking the most high-profile punishment the company has ever imposed. Trump is also banned from Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook.
Elon Musk has this week agreed to spend $44 billion to acquire Twitter, arguing that the deal was motivated by the social media company’s supposed censorship.
Right wing commentators have promoted a series of rivals to Twitter such as Parler, Gettr, and Trump’s own effort, Truth Social. Trump has said he doesn’t plan to return to Twitter even if Musk lifts his lifetime ban.
Using a lifetime exclusion as a tool to tame unwanted speech on social media platforms presents challenges for the industry, with companies facing pressure from governments and campaigners to tackle abusive language and stop the spread of misinformation.
“It’s something that I think the industry writ large has not figured out,” said Pickles. “You see this in drug policy…you do a lot of work on people who are in jail for things that are now legal and we’ve kind of got this digital equivalent of that.”
Musk has voiced numerous ideas about how to improve the 16-year-old social networking site, which he has promised to turn into a free-speech platform, a move that he has said is “essential to a functioning democracy.”
When asked about Musk’s takeover, Pickles said, “it’s weird being on the inside of it.”
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