Elon Musk Announces Content Moderation Council for Twitter

Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, on Friday announced that he will be forming a “content moderation council” to assess & moderate policies & decisions at the company. 

In his most recent tweet, Musk informed that the “council” will have “widely diverse viewpoints” and that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”

Elon Musk earlier in the day made it quite clear why he was up in arms on acquiring the world’s fastest-growing micro-blogging platform. One among them was to make the platform home for “free speech,” remove shadowbanning and was open to allowing the former president Donald Trump back onto the platform. With Friday’s announcement, it’s clear that he’s handing over these sorts of decisions to the council.

Dear Twitter Advertisers pic.twitter.com/GMwHmInPAS

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022

Vague Details Surrounding the Council

Elon Musk didn’t give out many details regarding the council – whether it will be elected through a vote, how many people would constitute the council, or even how it will differentiate from other contemporary councils that already exist in other companies. It needs to be seen what Musk has to say regarding this & how democratic his stance remains on the council set up.

However, Musk has made it amply clear that he doesn’t agree with the current modus operandi of the platform; when he took control of the company, he fired several chief executives, including policy chief Vijaya Gadde, whose decisions had been vehemently ridiculed publicly.

Not Something New But Holds Promise

Other social media giants like Meta, have done the same thing with their Oversight board, which is built to be an independent organization that rules Facebook’s platform and moderation decisions. However, critics have raised questions about how much power the board has in its hands & how much of it can be enforced. There’s also legislation that could dictate & set rules on how tech companies can operate their platforms, which might limit the kind of moderation decisions Twitter and other platforms can make.