Twitter’s “trust and safety council”, a moderating body responsible in particular for monitoring the sexual abuse of minors published on the social network, was dissolved on December 12 by Elon Musk, who criticizes it for its lack of action in terms of removal of child pornography.
“As Twitter enters a new phase, we are reassessing how best to incorporate external perspectives into our product and policy development. As part of this process, we decided that the Trust and Security Council was not the best structure to do this”can we read in an email sent to the members of the council.
Created in 2016 and made up of around 100 stakeholders – including independent civil rights, human rights and other organizations – the advisory function included addressing issues on the platform such as such as “hate speech”, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm. It was notified of its dissolution shortly before a meeting scheduled for the evening of December 12, according to theAssociated Press.
“A crime that they have refused to take action against child exploitation for years”
On December 8, three of its members had decided to resign, wishing to make known their protest against Twitter’s new moderation policy, which, according to them, does not sufficiently combat so-called hate speech. An exit to which Elon Musk had responded with a stung tweet on December 10, explaining that it was “a crime that they have refused to take action against child exploitation for years”.
It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
Explaining that “hardly anyone was working on child safety”Elon Musk underlined his desire to fight against the exploitation of child pornography on the platform his “top priority”. On December 10, Twitter Safety communicated on its results on this project: in November, the number of suspensions of accounts of “bad actors” containing child sexual exploitation material was up 57% year-on-year, significantly more than any other month since early 2022.
“We have improved our detection and enforcement methods and expanded our partnerships with organizations that help prevent the trafficking of child pornography “, specified the company.