The Wall Street Journal has reported citing an email that Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council on Monday night. The council, set up in 2016, comprised civil-society groups and was responsible for addressing hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform. This was before the platform was taken over by billionaire Elon Musk.
“As Twitter moves into a new phase, we are reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work. As part of this process, we have decided that the Trust and Safety Council is not the best structure to do this,” read the email signed “Twitter.”
“Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,” the email said.
Twitter hasn’t officially said anything on the matter.
The decision happened the same day Musk tweeted that Twitter’s Basic blue tick will have half the number of advertisements and will offer a higher tier with no advertisements by next year. The move is aimed at boosting the social media platform’s revenue.
The company re-enabled the Twitter Blue sign earlier in the day. Individuals are reported to get a blue check, while gold and gray check marks will denote business and government accounts. The monthly subscription price will be $8 on the web and $11 on Apple devices, respectively.
Twitter’s new head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, who was entrusted with the job of overseeing user content and safety policies in November, told WSJ the company is moving quickly towards addressing problematic content. However, the cancellation email came in about an hour before the council was scheduled to meet Irwin and Nick Pickles, senior director for global public policy strategy, development and partnerships.
There has been a question mark over the role of Trust and Safety Council ever since Musk took over. He had earlier mentioned that he will create a content moderation council, but its working relation with Trust and Safety Council remained unclear.
Twitter had postponed the Trust and Safety Council’s regularly scheduled meeting until December 15 last month, before eventually moving it up to Monday last week.
Notably, the Trust and Safety Council had been unhappy with the way content was being handled by the platform. The members had met without Twitter representatives to discuss their concerns on November 29. Three members had publicly announced last week that they will quit the council saying that the safety and well-being of users was not being given any importance.
(With inputs from agencies)
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