Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council. The company informed the members of the Council about this decision via email on Monday night, less than an hour before their scheduled meeting with Twitter executives over a Zoom call, The Washington Post reports. The meeting didn’t take place, of course.
Formed in 2016, Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council was an advisory group of independent external organizations. The council was responsible for overseeing the platform’s safety policies and pitching in ideas to address hate speech, child exploitation, and other hateful content. It didn’t directly handle content moderation or policy enforcement but still played a pivotal role in making the social media app a safer and more civil place online.
But, the new Twitter owner Elon Musk doesn’t appear to see any need for such a council in his “new Twitter,” aka Twitter 2.0. Yesterday’s email to the members said the council was not the best structure to bring external insights into the company’s safety policies. It’s unclear if the company plans to do away with external insights altogether or if it has new ideas. Perhaps, the recent resignation of three members of the council triggered its abrupt disbanding.
Twitter disbands Trust and Safety Council days after three members resigned
In their resignation letter, the outgoing Trust and Safety Council said Twitter is no longer a safe platform under Musk. They said the new owner shouldn’t be allowed to define the digital safety of its users. In response, Musk alleged that the council “refused to take action on child exploitation for years!” It is a crime, he said referring to a 2021 lawsuit from a teenage sex trafficking victim. Twitter allegedly refused to take down pornographic images and videos of the victim because its investigation didn’t find a policy violation.
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey called Musk’s allegation false. But the latter responded with more information. All of this was a sign of a deteriorating relationship between the Twitter leadership and the Trust and Safety Council. And, just a couple of days later, the council was disbanded with immediate effect. This is the latest in a string of Musk’s decisions at Twitter unraveling the previous reign’s efforts. He has already announced a general amnesty for banned accounts and reinstated several suspended accounts.
There are concerns that Twitter will struggle to meet the same level of safety under Musk. Its former safety head suggested the company doesn’t have enough experienced employees to look after its safety policies. However, the new CEO says the company’s safety team is well-resourced. Machine-powered automated detection will be pivotal to the efforts, though. Twitter has also globally launched its crowdsourced fact-checking tool Community Notes.