Twitter gets rid of its “Trust and Safety Council” meant to help tackle harassment and child exploitation

According to CNN, Twitter has announced that it was disbanding its “Trust and Safety Council”. The information was obtained by the news platform through an email sent to the councils’ members.

The email read that Twitter was “reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work.” And “as part of this process”, the platform decided “that the Trust and Safety Council is not the best structure to do this”.

On 9 December, three members of the council announced that they were resigning. They even posted a statement explaining why—saying that “it is clear from research evidence that, contrary to claims by Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline”.

“The question has been on our minds: Should Musk be allowed to define digital safety as he has freedom of expression? Our answer is a categorical no,” they continued in their statement.

Since acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk went into the takeover with guns ablazing—from firing Twitter’s CEO and many other executives, to making users pay to get verified, to just plain banning users for making fun of him. Some Twitter users have also opted to switch to Tumblr and other platforms that serve as a Twitter alternative.

With the removal of the “Trust and Safety Council”, the platform will no longer have external expert organisations that advised on hard hitting issues. The issues included online safety, human and digital rights, suicide prevention, mental health, child sexual exploitation, and dehumanisation.

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