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

After closing a $44 billion transaction to take Twitter private, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — now the de facto CEO of Twitter — introduced that he plans to kind a “content material moderation council” on the social networking firm. He says he won’t make any “main content material selections” or reinstate any accounts that had been beforehand banned earlier than the council convenes.

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

On the time, Musk mentioned, “I’d reverse the everlasting ban… I do not personal Twitter but. So this isn’t like a factor that can undoubtedly 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 Facebook has been roundly criticized for using a council approach to creating content material moderation selections.

Considered one of Musk’s first large strikes after closing the deal was to fireplace Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, and different executives together with its prior head of security, Vijaya Gadde, who was concerned within the choice 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 meant 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 beneath oath subsequent month and information related to their probe into the assault, which the panel famous got here after weeks of his denying dropping 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 referred to as his central position in a deliberate effort to reverse his loss within the 2020 presidential election and to stay in energy.

As NBC News previously reported, a Twitter worker named Anika Navaroli offered testimony to the Jan. 6 committee suggesting that the social community didn’t do all the pieces in its energy in time to stop violence on that day.

It was clear that people utilizing Twitter had been plotting violence, in line 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 confirm whether or not Navaroli remains 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 “certainly one of our nice geniuses” throughout an interview with “Squawk Box” co-host Joe Kernen on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Switzerland.

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

In Might, Musk tweeted, “Previously I voted Democrat, as a result of they had been (principally) the kindness get together. However they’ve develop into the get together of division & hate, so I can now not assist them and can vote Republican.”