Twitter Disbands Trust And Safety Council That Was Made To Make Platform Safer: Report

Trust and Safety Council was formed in 2016 with a group of 100 individuals and organisations to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm, and other problems on the platform.

Twitter under Elon Musk has disbanded the Trust and Safety Council, a group that was formed to make the platform safer, reported news agency Reuters. Twitter's Trust and Safety Council was formed back in 2016 with a group of 100 independent civil, human rights, and other organisations to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the micro-blogging platform.

The company's decision was announced in an email, the report added. The email read: “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.”

“Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,” the email further added.

It was earlier reported by The Washington Post that the council was expecting to meet with company executives via Zoom. However, the disbandment mail arrived less than an hour before the meeting time. A council member Anne Collier had earlier tweeted, “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.”

A member of the Trust and Safety Council had earlier told the Associated Press that their work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal. Although the group gave suggestions on how Twitter could better combat hate, harassment, and other harms but didn't have any decision-making authority and didn't review specific content disputes.

Twitter has laid off more than half of its 3,700 workforce after tech billionaire Musk took over. More than 1,000 had also resigned, among them Yoel Roth, the company's former head of trust and safety.