Volker Turk, the U.N. human rights chief, on Saturday, urged Twitter’s new boss, Elon Musk, to make respect for human rights a core part of the social network. Previously, Musk fired about half of Twitter’s employees.
Turk said in an open letter that reports of Musk firing the platform’s entire human rights team “is not an encouraging start in my opinion.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said he was “concerned and apprehensive about our digital public square and Twitter’s role in it.”
He warned against the spread of hate speech and misinformation and stressed the need to protect user privacy.
Musk, the world’s richest man, took over the platform a week ago in a controversial deal.
After completing a massive $44 billion acquisition, Musk quickly proceeded to dissolve Twitter’s board of directors and fire its CEO and senior managers.
Twitter laid off about half of its 7,500 employees on Friday.
“Twitter, like all companies, needs to understand the dangers associated with the platform and take steps to address them,” Turk wrote. ”
“Respect for our common human rights should put guardrails on the use and development of the platform. In short, I urge you to ensure that human rights are at the heart of the Twitter administration under your leadership. ”
Turk tweeted the letter, which has more than 25,000 followers.
Turk, Austria’s longtime UN official, took office as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on 17 October. Turk laid out some fundamental human rights principles and urged Musk to put them at the heart of Twitter’s future management.
Horrific consequences
Turk urged Twitter to defend the right to privacy and freedom of expression to the maximum extent possible under relevant laws and transparently report government pressure that may violate these rights.
But free speech “is not a free pass,” he said, saying that as seen during the pandemic, the wild spread of harmful disinformation has caused real-world harm.
“Twitter has a responsibility to avoid amplifying content that harms people’s rights,” Turk said.
“There is no place on Twitter for the hatred that incites discrimination, hostility, or violence.”
“Hate speech is spreading like wildfire on social media… There were horrific and life-threatening consequences. ”
As a result, Twitter should continue to ban such hate on the platform, Turk said, while making every effort to quickly remove such content.
He also said that freedom of expression depends on the effective protection of privacy.
“It is critical that Twitter avoid intrusive user tracking and collection of relevant data and resist unreasonable government requests for user data to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law,” Turk said. ”
He said research is critical to understanding the impact of social media on society, and urged Musk to maintain access to Twitter data through his open app programming interface.
Finally, he stressed that Twitter should have content moderation capabilities in all languages and environments, not just in the United States or English.
(This article is based on a report by AFP.) )
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