Musk says granting 'amnesty' to suspended Twitter accounts
By: ByThe Associated Press
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Musk says granting 'amnesty' to suspended Twitter accounts
New Twitter owner Elon Musk says he is granting “amnesty” for suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation
SAN FRANCISCO -- New Twitter owner Elon Musk said Thursday that he is granting "amnesty” for suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation.
The billionaire's announcement came after he asked in a poll posted to his timeline to vote on reinstatements for accounts that have not “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.” The yes vote was 72%.
“The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.”
Musk used the same Latin phrase after posting a similar poll last last weekend before reinstating the account of former President Donald Trump, which Twitter had banned for encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Trump has said he won’t return to Twitter but has not deleted his account.
Such online polls are anything but scientific and can easily be influenced by bots.
In the month since Musk took over Twitter, groups that monitor the platform for racist, anti-Semitic and other toxic speech say it’s been on the rise on the world’s de facto public square. That has included a surge in racist abuse of World Cup soccer players that Twitter is allegedly failing to act on.
The uptick in harmful content is in large part due to the disorder following Musk’s decision to lay off half the company’s 7,500-person workforce, fire top executives, and then institute a series of ultimatums that prompted hundreds more to quit. Also let go were an untold number of contractors responsible for content moderation. Among those resigning over a lack of faith in Musk’s willingness to keep Twitter from devolving into a chaos of uncontrolled speech were Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth.
Major advertisers have also abandoned the platform.
On Oct. 28, the day after he took control, Musk tweeted that no suspended accounts would be reinstated until Twitter formed a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints that would consider the cases.
On Tuesday, he said he was reneging on that promise because he’d agreed to at the insistence of “a large coalition of political-social activists groups” who later ”broke the deal” by urging that advertisers at least temporarily stop giving Twitter their business.
A day earlier, Twitter reinstated the personal account of far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, which was banned in January for violating the platform’s COVID misinformation policies.
Musk, meanwhile, has been getting increasingly chummy on Twitter with right-wing figures. Before this month’s U.S. midterm election s he urged “independent-minded” people to vote Republican.
A report from the European Union published Thursday said Twitter took longer to review hateful content and removed less of it this year compared with 2021. The report was based on data collected over the spring — before Musk acquired Twitter — as part of an annual evaluation of online platforms’ compliance with the bloc’s code of conduct on disinformation. It found that Twitter assessed just over half of the notifications it received about illegal hate speech within 24 hours, down from 82% in 2021.
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Oh good, now she can frighten Americans into thinking they will be zapped by Israeli Space Lasers if they ever vote against her.
I'm not a tweeter, but out of curiosity do the Taliban, Hamas or ISIS still have Twitter access?
No they don't.
I guess that is determined by what "general amnesty" means to Elon.
Musk seems to change his mind a lot. Often with no warning.
He begged the Sales Manager not to quit last week only to fire her on Sunday because she was hesitant to fire more people.
He laid out elaborate plans for a "moderation council" to review all of the suspended or banned accounts, then switched gears to publishing polls as a way to allow him to reinstate Mr. Trump.
In the end, he decided on blanket amnesty the day after he said Alex Jones would never be unbanned.
Hamas? Russian bots? All back in apparently.
I tried to terminate my account to no avail. Since Musk took over I keep getting emails about how many messages I have, followers, people I follow. I haven't used Twitter since Oct 2017.
Elon fired 4,400 contractors, mostly Americans. Elon fired or laid off 3,700 other employees before 1,200 quit during a 48hour challenge.
Now he's talking about hiring software engineers from India a week after he laid off 75% of the Twitter employees in India for which the government of India says he broke their countries labor laws, Ditto for Japan and all of the Japanese teams jettisoned by Musk.
Twitter oft reported as running in the red, has $3Billion in cash to fall back on, yet Musk has threatened to use bankruptcy if the remaining employees don't fix Twitter.
In the past 16 years there have been hundreds of thousands of engineering hours poured into twttr to grow it large enough to prevent the fail whale. Twttr has been "re-architected" a few times, making the AI and technology unrivaled.
Musk wants to tear it down and start over. George Hotz a well known Iphone and Playstation hacker who has been working on self driving cars AI is a candidate to rewrite the twttr code.
Musk hired George yesterday and gave him 120 days to work on a new search engine.
Who knew there was a problem with the search engine?
I read the few employees in Brussels I believe quit or were let go. There was only like two or so of them working there but their job was working with the EU on content or something. So I am not even sure there is anyone working with the EU with their rules and regulations.
There's a European woman who was the Global manager of something at twttr
who is suing for improper termination under her country's labor laws.
Improper notice and the two months severance offered doesn't compare to the
terms of her contract.
Musk has run afoul of American laws and the NLRB routinely.
Yes they do, up until recently they were allowed to tweet hate and antisemitism. Recently they've been taken to task and several accounts banned.
We sure do get a lot of new members who post for a day or two and then disappear. What are your thoughts about that?
Perhaps they're just not that into NT? /s
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Maybe, after a day or two of bullshit, they tire.
Notwithstanding what those who are most at fault for the loss of those members, due to their political ranting and insulting, we lose a lot more potential members than you're aware of. Because of my job as spam police, I get to see every new signup to NT, I get a notice flashed on my screen, and if they post spam I delete them. Having now done this job for a number of years I can say that we are lucky if 10% of those who sign up, see what's posted, even bother to then post anything - they just disappear. The massive and growing debilitating political American divide and growing animosity between sides is reflected on NT and who the hell wants to get involved in that? If I hadn't been here from the beginning, remained loyal to the R.A. and a couple others who have earned my gratitude, and continue to enjoy contributing and responding in the movies and Creative Arts groups I would say piss on this site as well.
Anyone else think Musk is intentionally trying to drive Twitter into bankruptcy? I have to believe that by declaring bankruptcy there is a way for him to get some of his wasted $44 billion back and rid himself of a company he never actually wanted to own in the first place. Or else he is just a worse manager than I ever imagined, and it already sounds like working for him would absolutely suck.