Elon Musk was only in Twitter control for a short time, but he is already making great strides. musk fired a number of key executives on day one, including Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, but in a new tweet he says he’ll be taking things slower when it comes to making content moderation decisions.
Musk hasn’t said much since joining Twitter, but it appears he will create some kind of policy advisory body to oversee content moderation decisions. Musk said the group will reflect “diverse viewpoints,” though we’ll have to wait and see, of course. “To be very clear, we have not yet made any changes to Twitter’s content moderation policy,” Musk tweeted later Friday evening.
It’s important to note that Musk says he won’t make any major decisions or reinstate accounts — such as reinstatement of former President Donald Trump — until the board is in place. Since this is Musk, it might happen in a few hours or it might not happen at all, it’s hard to say. Hours later, Musk undermined his own claims of a formalized political decision-making system by using his own power to make big calls about content moderation.
In response to the daughter of controversial right-wing academic and self-help author Jordan Peterson, Musk made a strong statement that “anyone rejected for trivial and questionable reasons will be released from Twitter jail.” Peterson’s Twitter account was restricted after he switched to a transphobic tirade about actor Elliott Page earlier this yearso in this context, tweeting hate towards a trans man and his doctor is considered “petty and questionable” in Musk’s book.
On Thursday, Musk also let go of Vijay Gade, a respected senior executive at the company who spent more than 11 years helping navigate complex legal and moderation issues. Getting rid of Gaudet signaled the beginning of a new era with different solutions, for better or for worse.
A tweet is probably more balm for cheerful advertisers fearing that Musk would immediately turn the platform into a mess of harassment, hate, and misinformation. While Twitter may already fit this description with existing levels of moderation, advertisers are watching for any major shifts in the type of content allowed on the platform and how it could negatively impact their brands.
Musk may think this is an original idea, but Twitter is already consulting with trust and safety board advise its product and policy decisions. The council — it’s already called a council — originally consisted of 40 organizations and experts who advised it on complex policy areas. This group had a more advisory function and, unlike the Meta Supervisory Board, it was not designed to make binding decisions.
First announced in 2016, Twitter expanded the organization in 2020 to form groups dedicated to specific complex topics, including online safety and harassment, digital rights, child sexual exploitation and suicide prevention. “A lot of what we’re doing now, like ongoing meetings with NGOs, activists, and other organizations, is always part of our process, but we haven’t done enough to share it externally,” Twitter wrote at the time.
It’s possible that Musk has something more like an Oversight Board in mind when it comes to content moderation decisions, but everything from the people who make up the hypothetical board to the nature of the group’s influence is likely to be contentious.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/28/elon-musk-twitter-trump-content-moderation-council/
