Musk plans Twitter content material moderation council as questions on Trump return loom

After closing a $44 billion transaction to take Twitter non-public, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — now the de facto CEO of Twitter — introduced that he plans to type a “content material moderation council” on the social networking firm. He says he is not going to make any “main content material choices” or reinstate any accounts that have been beforehand banned earlier than the council convenes.

In Could 2022, after Musk had agreed to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share, he stated he would reverse Twitter’s lifetime ban on former President Donald Trump if the acquisition went by.

On the time, Musk stated, “I might reverse the everlasting ban… I do not personal Twitter but. So this isn’t like a factor that can positively occur, as a result of what if I do not personal Twitter?”

Musk has not but provided particulars about how his content material moderation council will work, who might be invited to it and whether or not Twitter’s might be roughly impartial or highly effective than Fb’s oversight board.

Twitter rival Fb has been roundly criticized for utilizing a council strategy to creating content material moderation choices.

Certainly one of Musk’s first large strikes after closing the deal was to fireside Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, and different executives together with its prior head of security, Vijaya Gadde, who was concerned within the determination to droop Trump, and ban political promoting on Twitter.

Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 following the assault by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol, which occurred simply as a joint session of Congress met to certify the election of President Joe Biden. The riot was supposed to disrupt the counting of the electoral votes.

As CNBC beforehand reported, Trump was issued a subpoena earlier this month by the Home choose committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot.

The committee, which voted unanimously on this transfer, is requiring Trump’s testimony below oath subsequent month and data related to their probe into the assault, which the panel famous got here after weeks of his denying shedding the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in a letter to Trump cited what they known as his central position in a deliberate effort to reverse his loss within the 2020 presidential election and to stay in energy.

As NBC Information beforehand reported, a Twitter worker named Anika Navaroli supplied testimony to the Jan. 6 committee suggesting that the social community didn’t do every little thing in its energy in time to forestall violence on that day.

It was clear that people utilizing Twitter have been plotting violence, in keeping with her testimony, and Twitter detected a surge in violent tags like “Execute Mike Pence” round Jan. 6, for instance. Trump had “fanned the flames” of violent customers’ persistent calls to hold Mike Pence, she testified.

CNBC couldn’t instantly verify whether or not Navaroli continues to be employed at Twitter.

Early within the Trump presidency, Musk served on a White Home financial advisory board and a producing jobs initiative council. However he stepped down from each in 2017, after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris local weather accords.

Regardless of this, Trump praised Musk effusively in 2020, calling him “one in all our nice geniuses” throughout an interview with “Squawk Field” co-host Joe Kernen on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Switzerland.

Trump praised Musk once more on Friday for taking Twitter non-public. The previous president beforehand stated he wouldn’t return to the platform, however that would change now that the corporate is run by Musk.

In Could, Musk tweeted, “Previously I voted Democrat, as a result of they have been (largely) the kindness celebration. However they’ve develop into the celebration of division & hate, so I can now not help them and can vote Republican.”