Twitter, owned by Elon Musk, has disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, a group of over 100 independent civil, human rights, and other organizations founded in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, and self-harm on the platform.
Monday evening, the council was slated to meet with Twitter representatives. According to many participants, Twitter notified the group through email that it was disbanding soon before the scheduled meeting.
The council members who provided The Associated Press with screenshots of the email from Twitter spoke anonymously out of fear of punishment. The email stated that Twitter was “reevaluating how best to introduce external insights” and that the council was “not the optimal structure to do so.”
The email, which was signed “Twitter,” stated, “Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will move faster and more aggressively than ever before, and we will continue to encourage your thoughts moving forward on how to achieve this aim.”
The volunteer committee gave recommendations and expertise on how Twitter should better address hatred, abuse, and other ills, but lacked decision-making authority and did not examine specific content disputes. Musk stated he would organize a new “content moderation council” to assist with critical decisions shortly after acquiring Twitter for $44 billion in late October, but later recanted.
Alex Holmes, a member of the council, tweeted, “Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council was a group of volunteers who, over many years, volunteered their time when requested by Twitter personnel to offer guidance on a variety of online abuses and safety issues.” It was never a ruling body or a decision-making body.
Twitter, based in San Francisco, confirmed the meeting with the council via email on Thursday, promising a “open conversation and Q&A” with Twitter workers, including Ella Irwin, the company’s new director of trust and safety.
This occurred on the same day that three council members announced their resignations on Twitter, claiming that “contrary to Elon Musk’s promises, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are declining.”
After Musk amplified his criticism of them and Twitter’s previous leadership for supposedly failing to do enough to prevent child sexual exploitation on the network, these former council members quickly became the subject of online vitriol.
It is a heinous crime that they resisted taking action against child exploitation for years! Musk tweeted.
Concerned about the increasing number of attacks on the council, some remaining members sent an email to Twitter on Monday morning demanding that the business stop misrepresenting the council’s function.
The memo stated that the false claims made by Twitter executives endangered current and former Council members.
In reality, one of the Trust and Safety Council’s advisory committees was devoted to child exploitation. This includes the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Rati Foundation, and Youth Adult Survivors & Kin in Need, or YAKIN.
»Twitter disbands Safety and Trust Council«