DAs the new Twitter owner, tech billionaire Elon Musk wants to create a new body to deal with controversial content. Before such a council meets, there should be no major decisions on content policy or account recovery, Musk wrote on Twitter on Friday. The activation of ex-President Donald Trump’s account, which Musk had been discussing in the past few months, should therefore not be expected immediately.
Musk completed the $44 billion takeover of the online service on Thursday. He has not yet given any details about his plans for the future of Twitter. The dismissal of top managers around the previous boss Parag Agrawal was initially only known through media reports.
The entrepreneur had repeatedly criticized that freedom of expression was too restricted on Twitter. This raised concerns that there might be more hate and hate speech on Twitter under his control.
Musk did not initially announce details of the planned committee on Friday. The Facebook group Meta has had an independent panel of experts for some time that can reverse the deletion of posts and the blocking of accounts. The decisions of the board are binding for the management.
With reference to Trump, this body ensured that the ex-president’s initial indefinite ban on Facebook was changed to a two-year one. The experts argued that Facebook’s rules only provide for temporary bans. Now the group will check in January whether Trump can return to the platform. On Twitter, the previous management always emphasized that there was no way back after a ban. Musk announced that he wanted to remove such “lifetime” bans.
On January 6, 2021, while still President, Trump praised his supporters who violently stormed the Capitol in Washington. As a result, he was blocked from Twitter and Facebook. He is now active on his own Twitter copy, Truth Social, but has a much smaller reach there.
