Last Monday evening, members of the Twitter Trust and Safety Council received an email. It wasn’t long before they met with the company’s executives, a meeting that had already been postponed once. The message announced the dissolution of the council. “As Twitter enters a new phase, we are re-evaluating how we bring in the best external partnerships for the products we develop and our policies. As part of this process, we decided that the Council of Trust and Security is not the best structure for this, ”says the corresponding message, which is in the hands of K.

The news certainly didn’t come like a bolt from the blue. Ever since Elon Musk took over the reins of the popular platform, every day has been a new day in the corporate microworld of Twitter, as well as for the platform’s millions of users. The dissolution of the council was the latest addition to the series of radical changes that preceded it. From mass layoffs in the early days, photos of employee office beds, employee layoffs, content management changes, advertisers quitting, to Donald Trump’s account recovery – yet the former US president shows no interest in returning to his once-privileged political realm – Elon Musk is not sitting still on your throne. On the contrary, he doesn’t stop “tweeting” and no one can yet say for sure where the Tesla and SpaceX strongman is heading.

“Twitter is no longer a secure platform,” American Airliani Abdul Rahman, a former member of the Council of Trust and Security, tells K. Abdul Rahman, along with Ann Collier and Leslie Podesta, were the three board members who resigned just days before it was finally dissolved. “I watched the negotiations of Elon Musk, and then I promised myself that if he crossed some red lines, I would resign. So is he,” he explains. “For me, the first thing was the increase in hate speech.” Indeed, studies have shown that since the new owner took over, insults against black Americans have increased by 202%, against gays by 58%, and anti-Semitic posts by 61%. The second red line, he continues, was the recovery of suspended accounts, some of which were linked to the October 6 riots. “The way Musk shows how he wants Twitter to work is like signaling to people who express hate. As if telling them that this behavior is normal. And you see it showing up online as well,” he tells us.

The Twitter Trust and Safety Council was created in 2016. It was an external expert advisory body that acted on a voluntary basis and had no working relationship with the platform itself. The board members met regularly with company executives responsible for user safety, but were never held accountable for decisions made by the company. On several occasions, board members have touched on Twitter’s errors and omissions in the area of ​​child safety.

“The way Musk shows that he wants The Medium to work sends a signal to people who express hate that this is normal.”

That was the case a few days ago when Airliani Abdul Rahman’s colleague Ann Collier tweeted the news of their resignation. Ann saw Mike Chernovich, an influencer with links to the PizzaGate conspiracy, retweet a tweet saying “You all belong in jail” and posting a two-year-old lawsuit against the platform for playing child sexual abuse images. Elon Musk reposted the topic, referred to all the names and wrote that “it’s a crime that they refused to do anything about child exploitation for years.” Jack Dorsey, founder of the platform, joined the conversation and replied: “Wrong.” However, his intervention did not change anything. From that moment on, the posts caught fire.

“We have received threats via email, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on all platforms, and we are still trying to figure out how to deal with all this hate against us,” Ann Collier tells us during a video call. “Whether the intention was or not, by posting tweets about us without clarity, or by responding to a tweet that mentions us, Musk appears to be using his followers as weapons and harassing users contrary to his public statements that put their safety at risk. first place”.

Indeed, I ask Abdul Rahman how the child protection council on Twitter has fared. “After the arrival of Musk, nothing has been done. Prior to that, there were frequent checks. We sent reports and notes to Twitter’s trust and safety department, and they took action very quickly,” he explains. When I bring up the issue of Donald Trump’s account, blocking and restoring it, Abdul Rahman is adamant. “It was a red line for me. This violence, which led to the death of people, would not have happened if it had not been on January 6, ”he notes. Ann Collier, while agreeing with her colleague, is more diplomatic. “Content management is complex and when we talk about a public figure, the value of news comes into the conversation, so managers need to decide if the public should know what the public figure is saying,” he stresses, adding that it is important to comply with the rules for everyone, especially when there is a threat of violence. “But there is also a balance that platforms must strike, and it is difficult to get it right,” he notes.

For now, both will keep their Twitter accounts public to follow developments. I ask what they think the platform will look like in a year. Airliani finds it difficult to answer. Ann finds the words: “A shadow of himself and a bigger tool for Republican voters than he ever was.”