Vicky Arias, FISM News
[elfsight_social_share_buttons id=”1″]
On Friday, the day after acquiring the company, Elon Musk announced the formation of a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints,” at Twitter, which will convene in the coming days to review current policies on content allowances and account reinstatements.
Many Twitter accounts were banned under the platform’s old regime, including that of former President Donald Trump. Since the change of leadership, many have been checking to see if those banned would reappear on the site, but according to Musk, the wait will continue at least a little while longer.
He stated that his new moderation council will meet before any decisions are made regarding whose accounts will be brought back online.
In May, Musk stated that he would reverse Trump’s ban on Twitter, though it remains unknown if the former president will return to the site since he started his own social media platform in February of this year.
“I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country. Twitter must now work hard to rid itself of all of the bots and fake accounts that have hurt it so badly. It will be much smaller, but better,” President Trump said in a statement on Friday.
Despite his congratulatory tone toward Musk, Trump explained that he will likely be staying on his own platform, Truth Social.
“I am staying on Truth. I like it better, I like the way it works, I like Elon, but I’m staying on Truth,” Trump said to Fox News Digital.
Musk’s Twitter takeover on Thursday leaves many wondering about the future of the platform.
Musk terminated Twitter’s top executives, CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and top legal advisor Vijaya Gadde on Thursday for allegedly “misleading him and Twitter investors over the number of fake accounts on the platform,” according to Reuters.
Musk, a self-declared “free speech absolutist,” explained to advertisers that his goal in purchasing Twitter is to make it more conducive to free speech.
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk explained in a Thursday tweet.
On Saturday, basketball player Lebron James was one of many who expressed concern about Twitter’s new direction.
The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) stated in a tweet that “evidence suggests that bad actors are trying to test the limits on Twitter. Several posts on 4chan encourage users to amplify derogatory slurs. For example, over the last 12 hours, the use of the n-word has increased nearly 500% from the previous average.”
“I hope [Musk] and his people take this very seriously because this is scary … So many … unfit people saying hate speech is free speech,” James tweeted in response.
The “bad actors” referenced in the NCRI tweet are unknown.
According to Yahoo News, Musk responded to James through his “company’s head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth.” Roth reported that the racial slurs came “over … 48 hours from ‘a small number’ of accounts posting ‘a ton of tweets … More than 50,000 Tweets repeatedly using a particular slur came from just 300 accounts,” stated Roth. “Nearly all of these accounts are inauthentic [and] we’ve taken action to ban the users involved in this trolling campaign — and are going to continue working to address this in the days to come to make Twitter safe and welcoming for everyone.”
In an effort to curtail fake accounts, Musk has instituted a new system for using Twitter’s famous blue check mark. According to Twitter, the check mark denotes that an account is “authentic, notable, and active” and “must represent or otherwise be associated with a prominently recognized individual or brand.” The check mark used to be $5 per month, but Musk is now proposing a $20 monthly fee to use it.
Twitter policies are updating rapidly. Check back with FISM News for the latest.