Less than a month after taking control of Twitter, Elon Musk said addressing child sexual exploitation content on the social media platform was “Priority #1.”
But there is little evidence that the company is taking more aggressive action under his management or putting more resources toward the platform’s long-running problem with child sexual exploitation content, according to interviews with four former employees, one current employee, internal company records and interviews with people who work to stop child abuse content online.
Meanwhile, Musk has turned the topic of online safety into part of a larger effort to disparage Twitter’s previous leaders and portray his ownership of the company as part of a sociopolitical battle against “the woke mind virus,” as he calls center-left to far-left ideals. That shift comes as he has further embraced the kind of far-right online rhetoric that often also includes false claims of child sex abuse.
“It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!” Musk tweeted Friday in response to a resignation letter from a member of the company’s Trust and Safety Council who worked on child abuse issues.
“This is false,” former CEO Jack Dorsey responded.
Under Musk’s new management, Twitter said that its November account suspensions for child sexual exploitation content were higher than in any other month of 2022 thanks to new partnerships with unnamed organizations and new “detection and enforcement methods” the...
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