In the last two days, Musk has lobbed bad faith accusations of supporting or enabling pedophilia or child trafficking against four people who criticized him. This has resulted in these individuals experience mass harassment and even threats.

Here's a thread to break it down.

The first three accusations were against the three people who publicly resigned from Twitter’s external Trust and Safety Council. This is an advisory council and the three resignations were from non-profit leaders. They resigned due to rises in hate speech on the platform.

While Musk has been saying hate speech is going down on the platform, the resignation letter made public yesterday show that external research is finding that not to be the case — it is actually increasing. That led the three external members of the advisory council to resign.

In response, Musk replies to someone accusing them of doing nothing about child porn related trafficking on Twitter and demanding they not be able to walk away but to be punished by saying, “indeed. Shame on them!” https://t.co/3ptzO16GBB

Musk's accusation and call that these people should be punished relies on the people reading it not knowing two things:

1. That this is an advisory council of external members & not even employees of Twitter
2. The difference between an advisory council and a governance board.

An ADVISORY council is not legally liable for the actions of a company and it never will be. Why? Because they have no power. They cannot force an organization to do anything. They are brought on as consultants. Often for PR or community building purposes.

They have no ability to change or control anything that happens as a company. They can make suggestions. But the only people who can act are employees, senior execs, and the company's board of directors. That's a governance board. All these groups CAN be found legally liable.

It's a bit odd, isn't it? For someone to accuse a group who has no direct control over the way a company is run and zero legal liability for that company's actions of being responsible for child trafficking on the site -- and to agree to calls that they be punished for this.

Musk is aware of this distinction. It would be impossible not to be as someone who sits or has sat on governance and advisory boards himself. For one type of appointment, you need to buy board insurance. For another you do not. Also, he likely has had advisory boards he's ignored

Twitter is responsible for what happened on its site. Not these council members. So, what’s been the result? A bunch of people demanding they be punished, harassing them, or calling them names based on false information. https://t.co/9g2cyStCE4

Here is more. Each of them are repeating this false narrative that an Advisory council who did not have the ability to take down child porn or even change a twitter’s policies around it outside of making recommendations that Twitter was free to ignore — is responsible. https://t.co/gyw0845odB

What did they do to deserve this? They resigned from the council and, in their resignation, cited external research showing an increase in hate speech on the platform that does not cohere with the story Elon is trying to tell about reductions in hate speech to win back ad buyers

Let's move onto the fourth accusation. This was against Yoel Roth, a former Twitter employee. There were two accusations.

1. That he supports pedophilia because of an article he posted years ago
2. That his PhD thesis argued to let gay teenagers use 'adult internet services'

Here is a tweet where someone quote tweets something Yoel posted on Twitter in 2010. The link goes to a Salon article about a teacher who was convicted for sleeping with a minor when they slept with an 18 year old student. The article didn’t answer the question Yoel asked https://t.co/Y68SekP3ux

At most it insinuated that it was a bit ridiculous to charge someone w/ sleeping with a minor if the student was 18. In context, Yoel tweeting that question can be read as him questioning the reporter’s conclusion not him supporting student/teacher sex.

http://bit.ly/bbpH68

Musk here in his response is suggesting that Yoel was communicating support about teacher/student sex. Given the context of the article it appears he was doing the opposite. Even without it, he was asking a question. Not making a statement. https://t.co/YIrEwJblV3

But Musk did not stop there. He went after Yoel again right below this exchange by screenshoting Roth’s dissertation and giving it a very bad faith read. The lack of reading comprehension here — or bad faith — is galling. https://t.co/U6k2dRyQQw

It actually says that teens are lying to be on Grindr & Grindr is getting away w/ allowing it by saying the teens are violating their TOS. Yoel says apps like Grindr should take MORE responsibility to safeguard youth by designing youth oriented spaces to connect gay youth safely

Well. That was exciting! I got temporarily restricted and was not told why. I assume it was because I was tweeting too quickly and was read as a bot as I just had to verify my account via text. But the old phone that's connected to this account needed to charge.

While people have suggested it was because of the content of my thread... I'm going to assume that wasn't the case until I hear otherwise. Other people are posting about it without getting restricted. Perhaps I got mass-reported for spam or something? Who knows.

I am deeply concerned about bad faith accusations against people who criticize those in power. These (obviously) aren't accusations to flippantly make and the consequences of them have yet to be fully seen.