BREAKING NEWS: Twitter dissolves Trust and Safety Council

The United States-based microblogging company, Twitter has disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, a volunteer group established in 2016 to advise on-site decisions, Reuters reports.

About half of Twitter’s staff – around 3,700 employees – have been fired since Elon Musk took charge of the company and introduced a cost-cutting drive.

More than 1,000 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,” an email sent to the Trust and Safety Council members, seen by Reuters, said.

It was also gathered that a Twitter page for the group has been deleted.

The council had various civil rights organisations, academics and other bodies that promoted 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 report added that an email from Twitter arrived less than an hour before members of the council were expecting to meet with company executives via Zoom.

Last week, three members of the Council resigned bringing up 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 tweeted.

Musk had responded on the microblogging site accusing council members of refusing to take action on child exploitation, a claim former CEO Jack Dorsey said was “false”.