When billionaire Elon Musk bought out Twitter, a lot of people, myself included, were skeptical concerning whether or not he would keep his word to make the social media platform more conducive to free speech and reveal the deep, dark secrets the company held under its previous leadership. I’m happy to report that thus far, Musk has kept his word and is draining the swamp at Twitter with a passion and speed I didn’t expect to see.
According to Breitbart News, Musk has now dissolved the company’s Trust and Safety Council, just three days after members on the council announced they would be resigning from their posts stating that “the safety and wellbeing of Twitter users are on the decline,” contrary to the reports of its new CEO.
The Washington Post issued a report that stated Twitter made the Trust and Safety Council go bye-bye on Monday night. The company wrote an email to board members that said, “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.”
The email goes on to say, “We are grateful for your engagement, advice and collaboration in recent years and wish you every success in the future.” This decision comes just a few days after three members of the board proclaimed their resignation from the council, saying they were doing so because “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.”
One of the members of the council spoke with WaPo and claimed that Twitter is throwing away “years of institutional memory that we on the council have brought” to the company.
“Getting external experts and advocates looking at your services makes you smarter,” they continued.
But the thing is, when you look at the reality of the situation, all this council brought to the table was censorship. And only one side was on the receiving end of it. The conservative side. The left engaged in far worse behavior and spreading of misinformation, yet rarely ever did someone on that side of the spectrum incur the wrath of the council. Clearly, there was a bias. The rules were not being applied equally. This level of censorship is precisely why the council needs to be dissolved.
Freedom of speech is for all people. Left or right. One side should not be censoring the other. That’s not how liberty works, people.
Larry Magid, chief executive of ConnectSafely, a nonprofit organization based in Silicon Valley that seeks to advise consumers about the internet use of children, said, “By disbanding it, we got fired instead of quit. Elon doesn’t want criticism, and he really doesn’t want the kind of advice he would very likely get from a safety advisory council, which would likely tell him to rehire some of the staff he got rid of, and reinstate some of the rules he got rid of, and turn the company in another direction from where he is turning it.”
Someone needs to send these people a box of tissues.
“Despite the lofty pronouncements of the former Trust and Safety Council, the company has done a terrible job at stopping child pornography from appearing on the platform. In fact, their inability to stop illegal material caused the company to change its business plans,” Breitbart reported.
“Twitter reportedly considered allowing porn stars to monetize their adult content via an OnlyFans-style subscription feature, but the plans were quickly shelved after internal teams found that the company is unable to effectively police child sexual abuse material (CSAM) already on its platform,” it said.
It continued, “The Verge reports that earlier this year, Twitter was developing a new revenue idea — an OnlyFans-style subscription feature for pornography on its platform. The company quickly put together a specialized team, referred to as the ‘Red Team’ to ‘pressure-test the decision to allow adult creators to monetize on the platform, by specifically focusing on what it would look like for Twitter to do this safely and responsibly.'”
The Red Team then discovered a huge obstacle in their way. Twitter was not able to allow porn stars to sell subscriptions because the company is not currently able to police harmful sexual content effectively, which includes child sexual abuse material that is already on the platform.
The bottom line is, censorship of a person’s political opinion should not exist, whether that individual is left or right. See, the liberals think this is only about the right wanting to have a platform to spread their belief system. It’s much deeper than that. Conservatives believe in the right to free speech for all people, even those they passionately disagree with. We would stand up for the rights of a Democrat to speak their mind as much as someone from our own team. That’s what it means to champion liberty.
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