From what I've observed, the uptick in botted/recently created accounts tweeting about that particular user has been pretty dramatic in the last few days.

Fellow Minnesotan, do you have a source for this? Not that I don’t believe you, I just want to read for my own eyes.

Unfortunately it's anecdotally based on my feed and of who I follow.

I typically use Twitter pretty passively. Most of my follows are tech oriented, journalists or local politicians, and it feels like every thread that has mentioned Musk's acquisition closing has been flooded with new accounts hailing the return of banned users.

It could be related to the subject matter, of course, but this has been during non-trending times and on posts that generally have mostly genuine engagement.

With the announcement today that he'll be reverting lifetime bans, I expect things to get even worse and the quality of the conversations to be near non-existent.

Doubt Musk has some unthought of revolutionary way to detect and neuter botnet accounts, and if he's insisting on laxing the enforcement of such accounts, it's going to get mucky real quick.

Like if people voted him back into the presidency. That would be terrible for democracy.

The people didn't vote him in the first time. We just have weird rules that enable our minority party to win the presidency. This is often claimed to prevent tyranny of the majority, but it's not a boon for democracy, rather a way to limit the extreme outcomes of democracy.

It's never good when someone denies the legitimacy of the very system that brought them into power. This is the part that makes him "terrible for democracy".

Come on. 50million+ people voted for him. Maybe he "shouldn't have won" in some technical senses (but not others), but to say he wasn't hugely supported by the Demos, the People, is ridiculous.

Embezzling every penny he could, modeling himself after Hitler, raising a mob to storming the capital to kidnap the vice president, and filing fake lawsuits about the election, was far far worse than losing the unofficial popular vote.

Don't "come on" the idea of a real democracy. Yes, he got a lot of support. Yes, he won according to the rules. However, 2/3 of people do not think the rules should work that way.

>Come on. 50million+ people voted for him

50 million+ people voted for a republican or non-democrat, they didn't vote "for trump". Just like when Biden won, 70 million+ people weren't voting for Biden, they were voting for a democrat, non-republican, or more specifically: anyone but Trump.

It's insanity when there are, for all intents and purposes, two people on a ballot to say "we chose this person specifically!!!". No you didn't, you chose one of the two options that was given to you, and since they are normally on the opposite end of the political spectrum you just chose the one "closest" to your views out of the two. Almost everything that happened up until that point is literally out of any normal individual person's control.

step out of your bubble

I agree, it would be terrible for democracy.

I thought we were all about making it easier for felons to reintegrate into society? ;)

The only way to protect democracy is by silencing your political opponents.