By Jason Abbruzzese -
NBC News
Twitter on Monday dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, a volunteer group that provided the company with outside advice on internet security, according to an email seen by Noticias Telemundo's sister network NBC News.
“As Twitter moves into a new phase, we are re-evaluating how best to bring external ideas into our policy and product development work,” the company said in the email.
“As part of this process, we have decided that the Trust and Security Council is not the best structure to do that,” she added.
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Alex Holmes, who had been a board member, tweeted that the email came after the company canceled a board meeting.
“The way all of this has played out and the way members have been treated is unfortunate and unacceptable,” said Holmes, a member of the advisory board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and deputy CEO of the nonprofit group The Diana Award.
Holmes added: "Over the past week, a number of council members have had their personal safety and well-being affected by the actions of Twitter staff."
Elon Musk, the new CEO of Twitter, continues to shape the company toward what he has called his "absolutist free speech" ideals, which have included restoring the accounts of white nationalists and followers of QAnon, one of the main American far-right conspiracy theories.
Musk has addressed concerns about abuse and misinformation flourishing on the platform, saying the company will embrace "freedom of speech, but not freedom of scope."
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More recently, he has used his Twitter account to more publicly embrace far-right talking points, such as attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci and mocking the use of gender pronouns.
The link to the Council's website gave an error on Monday night.
An archived version of the page said the council "consists of several advisory groups, each dedicated to issues critical to the health of the public conversation."
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“Areas of interest include online safety and bullying, digital and human rights, mental health and suicide prevention, child sexual exploitation and dehumanization,” it said, and the council included groups like the Anti-Defamation League, GLAAD, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Some board members recently sparked a controversy over the way the company handles child sexual exploitation material.
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Some members resigned last week, saying: "A Twitter run by dictation is no place for us."
Anne Collier, founder and CEO of the nonprofit The Net Safety Collaborative, announced her resignation and that of two other council members in a tweet, to which right-wing activist Jack Posobiec responded that council members "should be in jail” for the management that the company had done in the past of child sexual exploitation material.
The council advised on the issue but had no power to take action.
Musk responded to Posobiec: "It's a crime that they refused to take action against child exploitation for years!"
Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, responded: "This is false."
