Mr. Musk, a longtime self-described “free speech absolutist,” had mentioned in Could that he would reverse the everlasting ban of Mr. Trump on Twitter and let him again on the social community. However Mr. Musk had hit pause on altering Twitter’s content material guidelines after finishing his buyout.

Late final month, he mentioned that Twitter would kind a content material moderation council to deal with main content material selections on the platform and that he wouldn’t make any strikes on account reinstatements “earlier than that council convenes.” No council has been shaped. Then on Friday, Mr. Musk had tweeted that he was permitting some folks whose Twitter accounts had been barred, together with the comic Kathy Griffin and the writer and psychologist Jordan Peterson, again on to the platform.

Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Web Observatory, mentioned it was “odd” that Mr. Musk, who has spent months complaining about Twitter’s downside with bot accounts, would use a Twitter ballot through which bots may very well be voting to determine the difficulty after which assume that the outcome “displays some type of reputable ‘voice of the folks.’”

“It’s positively doable for small teams to create giant numbers of accounts to govern options like polls,” he added.

Mr. Trump’s Twitter reinstatement raised quick considerations from misinformation specialists and others. The previous president had used Twitter as a megaphone throughout his presidency to reward, cajole, foyer and put ahead his model of occasions. He usually unfold inaccurate data and infrequently introduced insurance policies on Twitter even earlier than his personal workers had been informed. Earlier than the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Trump had additionally tweeted feedback that sowed doubt concerning the integrity of the vote.

If Mr. Trump reverts to the identical type of content material that he has been sharing on Reality Social, he might make Twitter a “hotbed of hate, harassment and incitement,” mentioned Joan Donovan, the analysis director at Harvard’s Shorenstein Middle on Media, Politics and Public Coverage, which has studied the proliferation of misinformation.

If Mr. Trump returned to Twitter, it was additionally more likely to be a lift for his private model as a result of he might now attain a far wider and extra influential viewers, she mentioned.