‘Catturd’ Twitter account highlighted by Elon Musk turns on Tesla billionaire

New owner says de-platformed accounts will go through content moderation council before reinstatement

Graeme Massie
Los Angeles
Friday 04 November 2022 05:22 GMT
Comments
Related video: Elon Musk: Twitter will form content moderation council

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

The right-wing “Catturd” Twitter account that Elon Musk pledged to spend his first day of owning the company helping has turned on the Tesla billionaire.

One day after closing his $44bn purchase of the social media platform, Mr Musk promised to look into the pro-Trump account’s claims they had been “shadowbanned, ghostbanned, [and] searchbanned” by the previous regime.

The user initially welcomed Mr Musk’s announcement he was “digging into” the situation, which they said had gained the account thousands of new followers and removed the search ban.

But now it appears they have serious doubts about the way Mr Musk plans on running the platform, including the introduction of a new moderation council.

Mr Musk has said that any de-platformed accounts, including the likes of Donald Trump, will have to go through the council before being reinstated.

And he has said that Mr Trump and others will not be reinstated before the 8 November midterm elections.

“Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on [the] platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks,” Mr Musk tweeted on Wednesday.”

The Catturd account tweeted that they were unhappy with the situation.

“I admit when I’m wrong and I was 100% wrong about (Elon Musk) changing Twitter,” the account tweeted.

“The new Twitter moderation council is just a bunch of far left fanatic groups who were never targeted here. No average Joes, no real Conservatives, no one to represent the PEOPLE ACTUALLY TARGETED!”

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in