Civil rights groups have called out Elon Musk for going against his promise to curb hate speech and the spread of misinformation by reinstating Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
“Any advertiser still funding Twitter should immediately pause all advertising now,” NAACP President and CEO posted on Twitter over the weekend.
Musk has made several controversial changes to the social media platform following his $44 billion acquisition, including mass layoffs that raised concerns about the operation and safety of the site. And now he’s decided to reinstate Trump’s account after a slim majority of users voted in approval on a poll that the Tesla CEO shared.
Activists recently sat down with Musk after there was a surge of racist and antisemitic posts on the platform, which occurred after Musk’s takeover. Evidently, he promised a content moderation council would help make decisions about the site.
But it seems that the council did not convene to discuss Trump’s reinstatement, Bloomberg reported.
“We got a commitment he wouldn’t re-platform anyone until he had a transparent process. It is pretty clear that doing a Twitter poll is not a transparent process, especially because there’s no information about who voted in the poll,” Anti-Defamation League Vice President Yael Eisenstat told Bloomberg.
Trump’s Twitter account was banned in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Many feel that allowing him back on the platform goes against Musk’s vows of content moderation.
Regardless, Trump says he won’t return.
“This is not a game — these decisions affect people and they shouldn’t be up to @elonmusk’s personal whims or a random Twitter poll about whether or not Trump, who incited a violent insurrection when he was last on the platform, is allowed a free pass to spread more racist lies,” said Color of Change President Rashad Robinson.
