On Sunday, Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, asked people if they thought the US government should pardon WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Edward Snowden.
‘I made a pledge to conduct this poll, but I am not giving my view. Should Snowden and Assange be granted pardons?’ Musk wrote in a tweet.
After disclosing private and delicate information about alleged wrongdoings and surveillance by the US military and intelligence, Assange and Snowden have both been living in exile.
Snowden was given Russian citizenship by Vladimir Putin in September and reportedly received a Russian passport yesterday, while Assange is currently attempting to prevent his extradition from London to the US.
Within an hour of its posting, the poll had gotten over 560,000 votes, the majority of which were positive. The two whistleblowers were granted pardons by more than 79.8% of users.
Musk, a self-described ‘free-speech absolutist,’ has been in charge of the microblogging platform since then and has repeatedly carried out similar user polls. Musk has used these polls to make important choices regarding the social media platform, from comments on updated Twitter policies to unblocking accounts that had been reinstated.
He had tweeted on the possibility of restoring the blocked accounts of controversial artist Kanye West and former US president Donald Trump, asking ‘Should Twitter provide a blanket amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not breached the law or participated in egregious spam?’
Following feedback from more than 3.1 million users, Musk announced that ‘amnesty’ would start in a week. ‘The conversation is over. He said the Latin proverb ‘Vox Populi, Vox Dei,’ which translates to ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God.’ ‘
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