UNITED STATES: Elon Musk’s Twitter Inc. abruptly disbanded its Trust and Safety Council on Monday, a volunteer group established in 2016 to counsel the social media platform on site decisions.
On Monday night, the Trust and Safety council was scheduled to meet with Twitter representatives. But just before the meeting, Twitter notified the group via email that it was dissolving it, as per several sources.
An email sent to the Trust and Safety Council members stated, “As Twitter enters a new era, we are rethinking how to best incorporate outside perspectives into our work developing products and policies.” “We have determined that the Trust and Safety Council is not the ideal structure to carry out this exercise.”
The Council, an advisory body of almost 100 independent civil rights, human rights, and other organizations, seeks to enhance safety on the platform and addresses issues including hate speech, suicide, self-harm, child exploitation, suicide prevention, and many others. The group’s Twitter page has been taken down.
The email from Twitter added, “Our work to make Twitter a safe, educational space will be moving quicker and more aggressively than ever before, and we will continue to encourage your thoughts going forward about how to achieve this aim.”
Twitter did not instantly respond to the request for comment. Last week, three Council members resigned after voicing their concern for the security of Twitter users.
“It is evident from research data that, contrary to Elon Musk’s statements, Twitter users’ safety and wellbeing are declining,” Anne Collier, a council member, had tweeted.
Elon Musk previously accused council members of failing to act against child abuse, a claim that Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s former CEO, called “false,” to which Musk responded on his microblogging site, saying, “It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!”
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