Twitter announced late Monday that it has disbanded the company’s Trust and Safety Council, a board of experts that advised the platform on the “safety” of certain content, following concerns over child exploitation.
“As Twitter moves into a new phase, we are reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work,” the company wrote in an email to board members. “As part of this process, we have decided that the Trust and Safety Council is not the best structure to do this.”
“We are grateful for your engagement, advice and collaboration in recent years and wish you every success in the future,” the email continued.
The move comes just days after three members of the board announced their resignation from the positions saying in a press release that “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.”
Twitter’s Trust And Safety Council consisted of “a group of independent expert organizations from around the world” which advised on “issues critical to the health of the public conversation,” according to a now deleted page.
The announcement came less than an hour before members of the council were expected to meet with top Twitter executives for an online meeting to discuss recent developments at the company, the Washington Post reported.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former global head of Trust and Safety, has come under fire in recent days for resurfaced comments he made about sex and children, including one post where he considers whether children can “meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers.” Roth also wrote a dissertation for his PhD education at the University of Pennsylvania in which he appeared to argue that children should be able to access adult internet services, according to a tweet by Musk. Musk made the comments in response to a tweet from human trafficking survivor and awareness advocate Eliza Bleu pointing out the 2010 tweet from Roth about whether students can “meaningfully consent” to sex with teachers.
“This explains a lot,” Musk replied.
Recent reports show that Roth held weekly meetings with officials from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) for years, according to internal communications obtained by journalist Matt Taibbi. Roth also pushed to ban Congressman Matt Gaetz’s Twitter account and even campaigned for the removal of warning labels from content from democrat politicians which cast doubt on the legitimacy of certain elections.
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