Elon Musk said on Thursday he would begin restoring most previously banned Twitter accounts starting next week, in his broadest move yet to undo the social media platform’s policy of permanently suspending users who repeatedly violated its rules.

“The people have spoken,” tweeted Musk. “The amnesty starts next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei ”, he completed.

The announcement comes after Musk questioned his followers on Wednesday about the possibility of offering “general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided they have not broken the law or engaged in flagrant spam”.

Voting, which closed at around 12:45 am ET on Thursday, ended with 72.4% of votes in favor of the proposal and 27.6% of votes against. The poll got more than 3 million votes on Twitter.

It’s not immediately clear how Musk and his team at Twitter will resolve which accounts were banned for illegal content or spam versus other violations, or how many accounts in total will be restored.

Musk announced last week that he would restore Donald Trump’s account after another poll he posted on the platform ended slightly in favor of returning the former president, who had been banned after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, to the platform. .

The billionaire has also restored the accounts of several other controversial users, previously banned or suspended, including conservative Canadian podcaster Jordan Peterson, right-wing satirical site Babylon Bee, comedian Kathy Griffin and congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk said he would create a “content moderation board” with “widely diverse points of view” and that no major content decisions would be made until it was in place.

There is no evidence that such a group was formed or was involved in Musk’s platform replacement decisions. Instead, after Musk restored Trump’s account, he tweeted “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”, Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.

Before the Musk takeover, Twitter typically imposed “strikes” that amounted to suspensions for increasing periods of time when users repeatedly broke its Covid-19 rules or misinformed about civic integrity, giving users up to nine chances before being initialized from the platform.

The platform also had other enforcement mechanisms — such as labeling a tweet or reducing its reach — for its additional rules, including those prohibiting terrorism, threats of violence against individuals or groups of people, targeted abuse or harassment, posting another’s private information. person and content promote abuse or self-harm.

Musk previously said he disagreed with Twitter’s permanent ban policy.

“Twitter’s new policy is freedom of expression, not freedom of reach,” Musk said in a tweet last week, echoing an approach that is something of an industry standard. “Negative/hateful Tweets will be maximized and demonetized, so no ads or other revenue for Twitter.”

The decision to restore numerous previously banned accounts could further alienate Twitter’s advertisers, many of whom have fled the platform after the chaos since Musk took over and fearful that their ads will end up appearing alongside objectionable content. Musk said the departure of Twitter’s top advertisers in recent weeks has led to a “massive drop in revenue” for the company.