United Nations high commissioner for human rights Volker Turk has urged Elon Musk, the Twitter owner to respect human rights even as he rolls out cost-cutting measures.
Turk said in an open letter that “reports of the new owner laying off the platform’s entire human rights team were not from his perspective, an encouraging start.
The UN human rights boss said that: “Twitter has a responsibility to avoid amplifying content that results in harms to people’s rights…There is no place for hatred that incites discrimination, hostility or violence on Twitter.”
In addition, he added that: “Hate speech has spread like wildfire on social media … with horrific, life-threatening consequences.” It has emerged that as many as half of its more than 7,500 staff could be retrenched in the wake of sweeping policy revisions initiated by the new leadership.
Turk who said he was writing with “concern and apprehension about our digital public square and Twitter’s role in it” warned against propagating hate speech and misinformation and highlighted the need to protect user privacy, saying free speech was “not a free pass”.
“Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform’s use and evolution. In short, I urge you to ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter under your leadership,” the open letter which was posted on Twitter reads in part.
He added that: ““It is vital that Twitter refrain from invasive user tracking and amassing related data and that it resist, to the fullest extent possible under applicable laws, unjustified requests from governments for user data.”
