‘Why I quit Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council’ – ex-moderator discusses hate speech concerns ahead of Cambridge Disinformation Summit

Elon Musk’s Twitter faces its first serious rival with the launch of Instagram Threads today – but the billionaire has only himself to blame for his platform’s woes, claims Eirliani Abdul Rahman.

Eirliani was on the front line of the disinformation war until late last year. She had been on Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council since 2016. Along with 100 others, her job was to flag up abuse, hate speech, disinformation, violence, grooming and other transgressions.

“We did content moderation and tested new products for Twitter before it was rolled,” Eirliani says. “As it was an advisory position, we were not compensated.”

It was challenging, but then Musk paid $44bn for the platform and everything went haywire.

“Musk bought the platform in October 2022 and immediately there was a meteoric rise in hate speech on the platform,” Eirliani explains. “Within the first two weeks, there was a 61 per cent rise in slurs and insults against Jews; a 52 per cent increase against black people and a 58 per cent increase against gay men. There was no way I was going to remain on the council. It was not tenable.”

Along with two other colleagues, Eirliani resigned on December 8, and Musk then dissolved the council four days later. Twitter said it was “reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work”.

“There’s been no replacement since which is why I say the platform is unsafe,” says Eirliani, who cited the figures above for why she chose to resign.

“What I’m now working on for my doctoral thesis is the issue of indirect harassment, what my experience was, resigning from Twitter’s council,” says Eirliani. “So for instance when Trump tweeted ‘it will be wild’ regarding January 6, that was coded language to the alt-right community.”

The January 6 2021 storming of the Capitol in Washington resulted in at least seven deaths, including the subsequent suicides of four police officers who were on duty when the insurrection took place.

Some people are still on Twitter, hoping the Musk era will end sooner rather than later. How about Eirliani?

“I’m off Twitter, I’m on Mastodon now. To remain on a platform which has so conspicuously risen in terms of hate speech…. you are endorsing hateful behaviour. My work is how to protect people, including protection from indirect harassment, so the question is how do we create a platform which is safe in the future.

“I honestly believe there’s a need for a paradigm shift for internet use. We need to centre humans in data science and in technology.

“With Jack Dorsey [Twitter’s founder] I still had such high hopes for Twitter. I’m still fond of it. Maybe Musk will leave and sell it, or maybe there are other platforms coming out. It’s important to think about this. We’re talking about a techlash. We are rethinking social media. How do we do it in a way that is inclusive, and not just about billionaires doing whatever they want? How do we allow healthy conversations to be fostered?”

Will Eirliani be on the new Mark Zuckerberg Twitter rival, Threads?

“I’m going to wait and see.”

An additional problem, she says, is the media.

“It’s important to realise that journalism is much more than about ratings. If you give air to someone like Donald Trump, even if there is fact-checking, it’s going to create problems. A Gallup poll showed that only 8 per cent of people read Trump’s directly while 76 per cent of people heard about his tweets from other sources, including the media. So the role of the media is very important in all this.

“It’s better to educate and talk about things which can unify us, because social media brings us together it and in doing so, it inadvertently causes friction. Twitter is like a wedding wherein where you have your family and friends from all walks of life altogether in one place. You would normally behave differently in front of your mother-in-law than you would in front of your friends. Social media makes that practically impossible. We need tobe able to talk to people in a way that they can understand and that might mean, for example as we had learned during Covid-19, leveraging a trusted family friend rather than a doctor.”

Eirliani is attending the first Cambridge Disinformation Summit later this month.

“I’m looking forward to it,” says the Harvard doctoral student via a video call from a conference on digital methods at the University of Amsterdam. “Prof. Jagolinzer [organiser Alan Jagolinzer] has done a fabulous job bringing all the movers and shakers into this space. It is not just about this event per se: it’s about building together a community of practice and exploring how we can change things, because we can’t just wait for the law. It is too slow. We need to build a collective that is dynamic so we can change things in our respective daily lives.”