One week before the US midterm elections, leaders of major civil rights groups spoke with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
The purpose of the call was to pressure Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, to disallow many banned users from returning to the platform, and to give company staffers the tools necessary to combat election-related misinformation.
The groups represented on the call were the Anti-Defamation League, NAACP, Color of Change, Asian American Foundation, and Free Press.
In total, the leaders spoke with Musk for almost an hour.
During the call, the civil rights leaders expressed their concerns about Twitter being used as a tool to spread hatred and disinformation.
They also criticised Twitter for not doing enough to protect vulnerable communities from online harassment.
Some of the organizations represented have co-signed an open letter to Twitter’s advertisers to encourage them to “cease all advertising on Twitter globally if he [Musk] follows through on his plans to undermine brand safety and community standards including gutting content moderation.”
In response, Musk said that he would look into their requests and get back to them.
After the call, Musk tweeted that users who’ve been banned from Twitter for violating its rules — a group that includes Donald Trump— will not have the chance to return to the platform for at least another few weeks.
That’s after the midterms.
He also said that he would consider giving staff members more information about how Twitter’s algorithms work, so they can better combat misinformation.
This is not the first time that Musk has faced pressure to do more to clean up Twitter.
