Twitter disbands the Trust and Safety Council, made up of external advisors. Former members complain about the leader who doesn’t want to hear any criticism.
According to The Washington Post and NPR, Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council via email and less than an hour after its members met via Zoom with company executives. The board was supposed to discuss the latest developments and changes on the site under the leadership of Elon Musk, but the email explains that the help of the participants is no longer needed. They appear to have been briefed that Twitter is “re-examining how best to communicate this external vision”and that the Council is no longer “the best structure to do so.”
Twitter Disbands Trust and Safety Council Made up of External Advisors
Therefore, the company closed this group just a few days after the resignation of three of its members. In their letter, they stated that the well-being of Twitter users is deteriorating despite Elon Musk’s claims and that the latter should not be allowed to define digital security. In response to the news, the American multi-billionaire tweeted: “It’s a crime to refuse to speak out against child exploitation for years!”Following the tweet, NPR reported that some of the remaining members sent a letter on Twitter asking the company to stop misrepresenting the board’s role as attacks on advisers escalated.
Members of the Trust and Security Council are not employees of the platform, for example, they do not have the right to make decisions. This is a group of external advisors made up of experts from various organizations including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, YAKIN (Youth, Survivors and Relatives in Need), Samaritans and GLAAD who volunteer to help Twitter figure out how to combat hate and harassment. When Twitter formed the council in 2016, the company said the group’s goal was to make the platform a less toxic place where “everyone, everywhere can speak up safely.”
Former members complain about the leader who doesn’t want to hear any criticism
Another member, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), confirmed to Engadget that they received a letter from Twitter announcing the dissolution of the Council. Twitter apparently explained that it wants to continue working with partner organizations through “bilateral or small group meetings”and “contacts across countries.”According to CPJ President Jody Ginsberg, “Mechanisms like the Trust and Safety Council help platforms like Twitter understand how to manage harm and counter anti-journalist behavior. Online safety can mean survival in the real world. Today’s decision to dissolve the Council raises concerns,
Larry Magrid, head of the nonprofit ConnectSafely, told The Post: “By dissolving [the board], we were fired instead of resigning. Elon doesn’t want any criticism, and he doesn’t want the advice he should get from the safety board, which will definitely tell him to re-hire some of the employees he fired, like reinstate some of the rules he removed. it took the company in a completely different direction.”
Last October, Elon Musk said he would create a “moderator council”made up of members with “very different points of view”before reinstating suspended accounts. But in an interview given in November, he acknowledged that he would always have the final say in the decision-making process. Twitter has yet to implement this moderation board, but Elon Musk has already reinstated suspended accounts such as those of Donald Trump and Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi creator of The Daily Stormer.