Elon Musk Sits Down with French President Emmanuel Macron to Discuss Twitter's Content Policy

French President Emmanuel Macron sat down with Elon Musk to talk about Twitter's content policy during his US visit. Macron claimed that he had a "clear and honest" conversation with the Chief Twit regarding its content moderation practices, as reported first by Reuters.

Transparent User Policies

"Transparent user policies, significant reinforcement of content moderation and protection of freedom of speech: efforts have to be made by Twitter to comply with European regulations, " Macron said in a tweet on Saturday, Dec. 3.

The top French official said in a separate tweet: "We will work with Twitter to improve online child protection. Elon Musk confirmed it to me today. Let's better protect our children online!"

On Friday, Dec. 2, researchers claimed that hate speech on the platform has been on the rise ever since Musk took the Twitter reign. However, Musk refuted this claim and called it "utterly false."

The Centre for Countering Digital (CCDH) claims that, on average, 1,282 tweets per day are racist toward the Black community, and 5,117 tweets per day are hateful toward transgender people.

But Musk insists that hate speech impressions are declining despite significant user growth and that Twitter's Safety department will release data weekly.

The richest man in the world acquired Twitter in October and immediately fired many of its workers, and introduced new changes to several products. Many have raised concerns about the app's content moderation since some of the teams responsible for this task have been laid off.

Several accounts that had been previously banned for supposedly violating its content guidelines, such as those of former US president Donald Trump, his former strategist Steve Bannon, and right-wing UK broadcasters Katie Hopkins, and David Duke, have been reinstated by the billionaire.

The Covid U-Turn

Twitter has also stopped enforcing a policy that forbade users from disseminating false information regarding Covid-19 and vaccination efficacy.

This u-turn was not met positively by the French president, especially now that France is dealing with a dramatic increase in Covid19 cases.

Musk has referred to himself as a "free speech absolutist" before even taking over the bird app. This has prompted several advertisers from doing business with the company, including Tesla's rival GM.

The French president also visited Louisiana, the American state that has historically had the closest ties to his country, to recognize their cultural ties and discuss energy policy and the current climate crisis.