NPR’s Juana Summers talks with Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt about a meeting he and other civil rights leaders had with Elon Musk about curbing misinformation on Twitter.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The spread of misinformation is still a top concern in this final stretch of the 2022 midterm elections. So where does one influential platform, Twitter, now stand on those concerns? This week, seven civil rights leaders got on a conference call with Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk to try to find out. He is facing increasing pressure as the company has acknowledged a surge in hate speech on the platform. CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League Jonathan Greenblatt was on that call with Musk on Tuesday, and he joins me now. Welcome.
JONATHAN GREENBLATT: Thank you for having me.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. So as I understand, Musk was the only Twitter leader on this call. What is the top line on what you all heard from him?
GREENBLATT: Well, first of all, just to give you some context, this was members of the Stop Hate for Profit Coalition, a group of civil rights leaders who came together in 2020 after the surge of hate speech, racism and antisemitism on Facebook that was able to ring over a period of months in a series of concessions from the company. We’ve spoken out about YouTube and Twitter in the past. We came together to meet with Elon Musk to understand his vision for the platform and share some specific concerns. I think the top line on the meeting was, to be honest with you, as always is the case, you know, words matter, but actions matter much more. And yet what we heard was very encouraging. He listened. He processed. And he responded with some very specific commitments that he then tweeted out later that evening, suggesting to us that he plans on following through.
SUMMERS: And we should just acknowledge here that most of the world is not on this platform, is not on Twitter. So…
GREENBLATT: Of course.
SUMMERS: Why is it so important to you and the other members of this coalition to get these assurances, to have these conversations with Elon Musk on how the platform is used moving forward?
GREENBLATT: Well, look. Already since it was announced he would be buying the platform, we’ve seen an uptick in extremist activity, racism, antisemitism, homophobia. And we know advertisers share our concerns as well. And so we wanted to express our issues and to hear from him but not just hear, watch him. Will he do it? Putting it in writing on Twitter somewhat binds Elon Musk, I think, to live up to his own words. And he said specific things about not replatforming anyone until there’s a clear and transparent process – people who’ve been kicked off the platform – about maintaining a commitment with information, with infrastructure and resources to enforce election disinformation and maintain the integrity of elections and, finally, to adopt and create a content moderation council, including representatives of groups like ours who have faced hateful violence in the past.
SUMMERS: You mentioned replatforming, so I’d like to ask you about one particular user, former President Donald Trump, who was kicked off of Twitter in 2021 shortly after the January 6 attack on the Capitol for tweets that violated Twitter’s glorification of violence policy. Did the possibility of allowing Trump back on Twitter come up in your conversation?
GREENBLATT: Trump’s name was not mentioned. He – actually, I think his name was mentioned. We didn’t ask whether he would be replatformed. But Elon did agree not to allow anyone, which would include President Trump, who was deplatformed for violating Twitter rules or inciting violence back on the platform, regardless of their political stature, until there is a transparent process with clear rules and until after the election results are certified. That struck all of us as an important win.
