Amid Resignation Chaos At Twitter, Elon Musk Proposes New Policy

Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, today announced his plans for content moderation on Twitter. The new Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach, Musk said, a day after a mass exodus of employees.

Hundreds of employees at Twitter resigned yesterday, after his ultimatum to commit to “hardcore” work. The company’s workforce had already been cut to half within a week after Musk’s acquisition.

In his latest policy update for his new acquisition, Musk said hate tweets will be deboosted and demonetised.

“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet,” he tweeted.

This applies just to the individual tweet, not the whole account, he clarified.

Musk also posted a Twitter poll on if former US President Donald Trump’s account be reinstated, months after he promised to reverse the ban instated after the Capitol violence last year. “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” he said, a Latin phrase meaning, “the voice of the people is the voice of the god.”

Hours earlier, he had announced the reinstatement of several other accounts, but said no decision has been made yet on Trump.

Twitter closed its offices till Monday amid mass resignations prompted by Musk asking them to pledge to work longer hours at “high intensity” or accept a three months’ severance. In his email, he said that for Twitter to succeed, “we need to be extremely hardcore,” Bloomberg had reported.

“The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried,” said Musk, undisturbed by the resignations, as he claimed the platform has hit “another all-time high” in usage.