Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, says the company is setting up a council to make important moderation decisions at the company. In a tweet on fridayMusk said the “council” will have “very divergent views” and that “no major content decisions or account recovery will occur before that council meets.” Several hours later, he clarified his statement with a quote tweetin which he explains, “To be very clear, we haven’t made any changes to Twitter’s content moderation policy yet,” while accelerating the experience of becoming a media executive.
The tweet does not detail what kinds of positions Musk wants to have on the board, how many people will be on it, how they will be appointed, or how it differs from the content moderation and policy teams that already exist at the company.
Other social media companies have tried a seemingly similar approach: Meta has its oversight board, which is intended to be an independent organization that governs Facebook’s platform and moderation decisions. However, critics have questioned how much power the board of directors actually has to enforce its rulings. There is also a web of potential legislation that could dictate how tech companies can moderate their platforms, limiting what kind of moderation decisions Twitter and other platforms can make, regardless of the “freedom of speech” ideals they aspire to.