Last Thursday, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. A tweet tirade by himself and his venture capitalist pals ensued, making headlines across the country.
One, in particular, from Musk caught everyone’s attention.
“Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints,” Musk tweeted the day after the acquisition was finalized.
What makes this of note is that a moderation council is precisely the route that Meta (formerly Facebook) took in 2018 when the firm created the Oversight Board to independently moderate content on the platform.
In an interview with Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell, Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg delved into the complexities of content moderation.
“He tweeted yesterday saying that being criticized from both the left and the right is a good thing,” Clegg said on stage at Fortune‘s CEO Initiative summit in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday. “I felt like saying ‘Welcome to the club’ because that’s what happens when you run up social media companies.”
Meta’s committee has faced a host of nuanced and tough decisions. Arguably one of the decisions that faced the most scrutiny was banning former U.S. president Donald Trump in 2021 after he praised rioters in a video amidst an attack at the Capitol while Congress was counting the electoral votes. Twitter joined Meta in banning Trump from its platform. However, Meta’s Oversight Board decided to convert the ban into a two-year suspension.
“We’ve certainly learned the hard way that it’s very difficult to strike a balance here [that] enjoys consensus from everybody,” Clegg said.
The difference between Twitter and Meta, however, is that Musk has been publicly in favor of reinstating Trump to the platform. The billionaire said it was a “mistake” for the social network to ban the former president, but said on Wednesday that Twitter “will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on the platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks.”
Clegg, who works closely with Meta’s Oversight Board, sympathized with the seemingly impossible task in front of Musk while also pointing out that the platforms are “very different creatures.” Twitter is short-form, text-based, and is a medium heavily used by politicians and “cultural elites.” Facebook and Instagram are used by billions of people around the world, he said, and the users don’t consider themselves to be part of “the elite.”
“You can’t keep everybody happy and certainly in the United States. Half the country thinks that you’re taking too much content down. The other half thinks you should take down more,” Clegg said. “It’ll be interesting to see the kind of journey he’s on because he’s made very big, sweeping promises about restoring free expression, as he put it.”
