Last week, three members of the Council resigned citing concern for the safety of Twitter users (Picture: Getty Images)
Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, a volunteer group formed in 2016 to advise the social media platform on site decisions.
About half of the social media site’s workforce – around 3,700 employees – has been laid off since Elon Musk took charge of the company and introduced a cost-cutting drive.
More than 1,000 Twitter employees have resigned, among them Yoel Roth, the company’s former head of trust and safety.
‘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,’ said an email sent to the Trust and Safety Council members, seen by Reuters.
A Twitter page for the group has been deleted.
The council comprised of various civil rights organizations, academics and other bodies that advocated for safety and advised Twitter as it developed products, programs, and rules, according to a web archive for the page.
‘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 from Twitter said.
The email from Twitter arrived less than an hour before members of the council were expecting to meet with company executives via Zoom, according to the Washington Post.
Last week, three members of the Council resigned citing concern for the safety of Twitter users.
‘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,’ council member Anne Collier had tweeted.
Musk had responded on the micro-blogging site accusing council members of refusing to take action on child exploitation, a claim former CEO Jack Dorsey said was ‘false’.
Meanwhile, online safety campaigners have warned that hate speech on Twitter was rising under Musk’s ownership.
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The group was disbanded an hour before a meeting with company executives.
