Ella Irwin, the Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter, has said the amnesty review of banned accounts is set to be completed within 30 days.
At the end of November, after restoring a number of prominent conservative accounts, new Twitter owner Elon Musk polled his audience to see if there was appetite for a “general amnesty” for banned accounts. A majority voted in favour of such a move, with only accounts that had not “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam” not being restored to Twitter.
Irwin, who took over the Trust and Safety role from radical leftist Yoel Roth, confirmed late on Tuesday night that the Twitter team had been “carefully reviewing thousands of suspended accounts for the past month,” and that users who “did not engage in threats of harm/violence, fraud or other illegal activity are being reinstated.”
The Trust and Safety Head noted that it would take around 30 days to finish the entire review. It remains unclear if this means that any account that was banned under the previous regime, that remains unbanned following the completion of the review, will have a chance to return to Twitter or not.
Our team has been carefully reviewing thousands of suspended accounts for the past month, including accounts noted in this thread. Users that did not engage in threats of harm/ violence, fraud or other illegal activity are being reinstated. Will need ~30 days to finish reviewing.
— Ella Irwin (@ellagirwin) December 28, 2022
According to a previous comment from Twitter Safety on December 17, the new team under Musk said that the restoration of banned accounts for whom “permanent suspension was a disproportionate action for breaking Twitter rules,” would take 30 days.
Irwin did not acknowledge the previously declared timeframe in her tweet on Tuesday.
We’ve identified several policies where permanent suspension was a disproportionate action for breaking Twitter rules. We recently started reinstating accounts that were suspended for violations of these policies and plan to expand to more accounts weekly over the next 30 days.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) December 17, 2022
Irwin had replied to a thread noting that notable users were still getting locked out of or suspended from Twitter after Elon’s takeover, despite not having violated any rules, but for posting comments that would go against leftist narratives. At the time of writing, many of the accounts had been restored.
As Valiant News reported, a similar pattern occurred with conservative accounts who were locked out for mocking Ukrainian President Zelensky, and his appearance in front of Congress. Some hypothesised that the lock-outs were instituted after “mass-reporting” by “trolls or state actors,” or a rogue Twitter employee.
