AFP, published on Wednesday, November 30, 2022 at 07:35
Gone are the days of promises and guarantees: Elon Musk has vowed to disrupt content moderation on Twitter, from restoring suspended accounts en masse to ending the fight against Covid misinformation.
“Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter will no longer apply its policy regarding misleading information regarding Covid-19,” according to a very rare and very brief press release from the San Francisco-based company, which as of Tuesday had not been released to the American Press.
Like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, Twitter had specific rules to combat fake health information during the pandemic. In particular, the platform had decided to report and remove messages containing misinformation about Covid vaccines and ban affected accounts after five warnings.
“We believe this alert system will help educate the public about our policies and better reduce the spread of potentially dangerous or misleading information on Twitter,” the social network said in March 2021.
But Elon Musk, owner and boss of the platform for a month, advocates an absolute vision of freedom of expression.
And he has never hidden his opinion of the health restrictions put in place during the pandemic, especially when they meant the temporary closure of his Tesla factory in California.
“Telling people that they cannot leave their homes and that they will be arrested if they do is fascist. It’s not a democracy. It’s not freedom. Give people their damn freedom back,” he said in April 2020 during a conference call for financial analysts.
After arriving at the top of Twitter and between two provocations, the multi-billionaire tried to reassure NGOs and advertisers who feared an outbreak of toxic content (hate speech, misinformation, etc.).
He reiterated that the platform’s rules have not changed and that suspended accounts will not be restored until a content moderation committee is in place.
Waste of time: many brands have fled, and Elon Musk felt cheated and acted. He launched polls on his profile, which he said reflected the “voice of the people,” and reinstalled the profile of ex-President Donald Trump (who was banned in January 2021 for inciting violence).
According to the specialist newsletter “Platformer”, the fiery leader also called on the engineers who were still employed to restore around 62,000 accounts that had been suspended for repeated violations.