Elon Musk declares Twitter ‘moderation council’ – as some push the platform’s limits

Among the most urgent questions facing Twitter in its new era as a private company under Elon Musk, a self-declared “free speech absolutist”, is how the platform will handle moderation.

After finalizing his takeover and ousting senior leadership, Musk declared on Friday that he would be forming a new “content moderation council” that would bring together “diverse views” on the issue.

“No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before the council convenes,” he tweeted.

But that hasn’t stopped users from cheering – or criticizing – what they expected to be a quick embrace of Musk’s pledges to cut back on moderation in an effort to promote free speech.

Concerns range from whether Musk will reinstate the account of Donald Trump – who was banned from the platform following the 6 January Capitol attack – to whether a less-regulated platform will allow hate speech and disinformation to flourish further.

With the US midterms just days away, concerns about political misinformation are also taking on renewed urgency. Civil rights organizations have sounded the alarm about the proliferation of harmful content, an issue that Twitter already struggles with, while Republicans have celebrated the change in ownership.

“His acquisition of Twitter has opened Pandora’s box,” the advocacy group Ultraviolet said in a Friday statement, while also urging Musk, Twitter executives and the company’s board of directors to continue to enforce the ban on Trump “as well as violent right-wing extremists and white supremacists”.

Musk has tried to play down fears, particularly among the advertisers he will depend on to keep the company afloat. General Motors has already said it will “pause” ads on the site as it weighs what direction Musk will take, and other companies could follow suit.

In a message this week to Twitter’s advertising clients, Musk said that the platform “obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape” and the platform must be “warm and welcoming to all”.

But many began testing the limits of the site just hours after the billionaire took the helm.

On Friday, conservative personalities began recirculating long-debunked conspiracy theories, including about Covid-19 and the 2020 election, as a means of gauging whether Twitter’s policies on misinformation were still being enforced.

Popular rightwing pundits tweeted buzzwords such as “ivermectin” and “Trump won” to see whether they would be penalized. Ivermectin, a cheap drug that kills parasites in humans and animals, has been promoted by some Republican lawmakers and conservative talkshow hosts as an effective Covid treatment but health experts have raised serious doubts.

“Ok, @elonmusk, is this thing on..?” tweeted Steve Cortes, a former commentator for the conservative TV network Newsmax and adviser to Trump. “There are two sexes Trump won ivermectin rocks.”

Meanwhile, dozens of extremist profiles – some newly created – circulated racial slurs and Nazi imagery while expressing gratitude to Musk. And researchers found a surge in new followers flocking to the accounts of high-profile rightwing figures in the 24 hours after Musk took over, the New York Times reported.

The jury is still out on what will become of the social media platform – and what it will tolerate. Observers are eyeing who stays, who goes and who might potentially come back from the list of people the platform has banned over the years. They range from Trump to the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke – none of whom have returned to the platform so far.

The former president was quick to offer his praise for Musk on Friday. “I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country,” Trump said in a morning post on his social media platform Truth Social, though he indicated that he might not return to the platform despite Musk saying he would reverse Trump’s ban.

Seniors figures in UK and European politics have urged Musk to take his responsibilities to Twitter and its users seriously.

The EU’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, wrote on the platform on Friday that “in Europe, the bird will fly by our rules”. (Musk confirmed his takeover over the business by tweeting: “the bird is freed”.)

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, tweeted on Friday: “Any decision about allowing suspended users to return must be taken incredibly carefully & in direct consultation with experts in countering digital hate & misinformation.”

The Facebook Oversight Board, a semi-independent board of experts created to review high-profile content decisions at Facebook, offered to help Musk in his mission.

“Independent oversight of content moderation has a vital role to play in building trust in platforms and ensuring users are treated fairly,” the group tweeted on Friday. “We would welcome the opportunity to discuss Twitter’s plans in more detail with the company.

Twitter’s user base, at just over 230 million users, is far smaller than competitors such as Facebook and TikTok. And while the platform is still highly influential among celebrities, journalists and politicians, many have warned its relevancy could fade if it descends into chaos.

Some are encouraging users to take matters into their own hands and abandon the platform for other sources of news and connection.

Jennifer Grygiel, a social media expert and professor at Syracuse University, predicted a flight if quality declines on a Musk-run Twitter, and suggests that might not be a bad thing.

“Elon Musk bought a platform, he didn’t buy people,” said Grygiel. “And we still have a choice in how we get our news, our information and how we communicate.”