Musk plans board to moderate Twitter content as questions arise over Trump return

Following the completion of a $44 billion transaction to take Twitter private, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — now Twitter’s de facto CEO — announced plans to form a “content moderation council” at the company for social networks. He says he won’t make any “major content decisions” or reinstate accounts that were previously banned before the council convened.

In May 2022, after Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share, he said he would lift Twitter’s lifetime ban on former President Donald Trump if the acquisition went through.

At the time, Musk said: “I would reverse the permanent ban… I don’t own Twitter yet. So it’s not like something that’s definitely going to happen because what if I don’t own Twitter?’

Musk has yet to provide details on how his content moderation board will work, who will be invited to it, and whether Twitter will be more or less independent or powerful than Facebook’s supervisory board.

Rival on Twitter Facebook has been heavily criticized for using a Soviet-style approach to content moderation decisions.

One of Musk’s first big moves after the deal was struck was to fire Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and other executives, including former head of security Vijaya Gadeh, who was involved in the decision to remove Trump and ban political advertising on Twitter .

Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 following the attack by his supporters on the US Capitol, which occurred just as a joint session of Congress convened to certify the election of President Joe Biden. The riot was aimed at preventing the counting of electoral votes.

As CNBC previously reported, Trump received a subpoena earlier this month from a special House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot.

The committee, which voted unanimously for the move, is demanding Trump’s testimony under oath next month and records related to their investigation into the assault, which the panel noted came after weeks of denials about it in the 2020 election by President Joe Biden. .

Committee Chairwoman Benny Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in a letter to Trump cited what they called his central role in a deliberate effort to reverse his presidential loss in 2020 they remain in power.

Like NBC News previously reportedA Twitter employee named Annika Navarroli provided testimony to the commission on January 6, suggesting that the social network did not do everything in its power in time to prevent violence that day.

It was clear that individuals using Twitter were planning violence, according to her testimony, and Twitter saw a spike in violent hashtags such as “Execute Mike Pence” around Jan. 6, for example. Trump has “fanned the flames” of persistent calls from aggressive users to hang Mike Pence, she testified.

CNBC could not immediately ascertain whether Navarroli is still employed by Twitter.

Early in Trump’s presidency, Musk served on a White House Economic Advisory Council and Manufacturing Jobs Initiative Council. But he withdrew from both in 2017 after Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate accords.

However, Trump praised Musk effusively in 2020, calling him “one of our great geniuses” during an interview with “Squawk Box” co-host Joe Kernen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Trump again praised Musk on Friday for making Twitter private. The former president previously said he would not return to the platform, but that could change now that the company is under Musk’s leadership.

In May, Musk tweeted: “In the past I have voted for Democrats because they were (mostly) the party of kindness. But they have become the party of division and hate, so I can no longer support them and I will vote Republican.”