Elon Musk admitted to his Twitter staff that the platform’s Content Moderation Council is all for show and that at the end of the day he decides what gets posted.
In a video obtained by TMZ, Musk is seen addressing his staff in a Saturday Zoom meeting, where he informs them he has the final say over content shared on Twitter. He added that any evidence to the contrary is “simply not true.”
“I wanna just be clear about, we are gonna do a content council, but it’s an advisory council,” Musk said. “They’re not the ones who actually—at the end of the day it will be me deciding it and any pretense to the contrary is simply not true. Because at the end of the day I can choose who’s on it, that content council, and I don’t need to listen to what they say.”
The leaked video comes as Kanye West and most notably Donald Trump have been welcomed back to Twitter in recent days. Ye had been suspended from the platform following an antisemitic tweet in October, and addressed his 32 million followers by tweeting “Shalom” on Sunday, a Hebrew greeting. As for the ex-POTUS, his account was banned in 2021 following the Capitol riot.
When confirming Trump’s suspension in a public statement, Twitter said it had “permanently” barred the account because of a risk of “further incitement of violence.” Trump has yet to take advantage of his reinstated account.
Despite those reinstatements, Musk said he wouldn’t allow Infowars founder Alex Jones to return to Twitter, after he was banned in 2018.
When asked whether Musk would allow Jones to return, he simply tweeted “no” and when asked why, said he had “no mercy” for those who “use the deaths of children.”
