Excerpt:

>GENEVA, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, on Saturday issued an open letter to Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter Inc, urging him to "ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter".

>Twitter Inc laid off half its workforce on Friday and tweets by staff of the social media company said the team responsible for human rights was among those affected, a development which Türk described as not "an encouraging start".

>"Twitter is part of a global revolution that has transformed how we communicate," Türk said in the letter. "But I write with concern and apprehension about our digital public square and Twitter's role in it."

>^Writing ^by ^Paul ^Carrel; ^editing ^by ^Jason ^Neely

Open letter from Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 5 November 2022, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/press/2022-11-05/22-11-05_Letter_HC_to_Mr_Elon_Musk.pdf

As if the UN is going to convince Elon to stop abusing his employees

I think we can agree things might be going to shit anytime the UN contacts you about human rights

Because the default state is expecting Elon to not give a shit and light up

Were human rights ever a consideration for Twitter’s management?

I urge the U.N. to safeguard human rights.

Elon: “No I don’t think I will.”

The UN is making a false proposition: as if Elon somehow does not care about human rights, when all that he is currently doing is restructuring the company.

The services of Twitter are still accessible to all; Elon has not curtailed freedom of speech in any way, nor goaded against human rights in any way.

What I see is some people internally asking their friends in high places in the UN to speak out, because they lost their job... as if that were a human rights violation.

One easy way we can all contribute to the human rights effort globally is leave Twitter today and let it twist.

I don't think the people fired necessarily had "friends in high places", first people to go that made the news was the AI ethics team, and obviously is a red flag, on a global multi million user platform like Twitter when ethics are compromised additionally to comments from Elon on removing censoring

UN has raped it's way through much of sub-Saharan Africa. So, pass.

So the fact that in the US we work “at will” and have no real contract let alone sick pay, maternity pay, even disability is left to the employer will go unnoticed? Let me not get into vacation days!

Doesn't he own a blood diamond mine?

Thinking that a social media app can violate human rights is absurd.

You can't lose 4M a day and not expect layoffs.

The party on other people's money is over. Now it has to actually function as a business.

Anyone who thought that this take over wasn't going to see a goodly percentage of the workers get shitcanned wasn't being realistic.

This conversation continues to be one-sided. I certainly don't hear anyone floating the consideration that maybe, just maybe, the work that the AI ethics team was doing was not actually in line with the connotation attached to the title.

I realize this is going to be hard for a lot of hardcore twits to understand, but maybe that precious platform has long since been corrupted through one-sided views leading to very ineffective ethics policing.

This situation is turning out no different than a number of the major police incidents in the recent years where the public had their judgment and trial finished before the prosecutor even had charges filed.

Conversations like these should probably be stowed for awhile until he has time to see whatever his intentions through a bit. I realize that the intent may be completely ill here. One thing that is unarguable though, is that it's way too soon to know either way.

So I can comfortably sit back and laugh at all of these people projecting their hate of the takeover with their blatantly one-sided personality. I struggle to understand why so many give so much of a fuck anyhow. It baffles me how so many people want to dump so much of their existence into social media platforms anyhow. They are literally tools of the very billionaires they say they hate.

It could be like you're saying, it's a possibility

I have never used personally as an account Twitter, or Facebook, or TikTok or Instagram

Reddit granted and LinkedIn because kinda of a necessity for jobs

Of course not, that's ridiculous.

They're emeralds.

I think it might have something to do with paying back 44 billion in debt.

Do you disagree with what they’re asking for?

In an effort to curb misinformation, no. He doesn't. His dad owned an emerald mine in South Africa, but he and his mom had basically "escaped" from him being abusive and they seemingly haven't talked in decades. He didn't get his wealth from an emerald mine. There's so much to shit on Elon for... It's baffling how people always seem to focus on the few things that simply aren't true.

Really? I believe the only thing the UN requested was $6.6 billion after Musk asked them for a plan to end hunger.

Well really they aren't his employees anymore.

The only human he cares about is himself.

They disagree with what they're asking for.

I have yet to see what the Human Rights division at Twitter even did. What was their job? Twitter isn't real life, it's just people shit posting.

Edit: I found this-

> “Yesterday was my last day at Twitter: the entire Human Rights team has been cut from the company,” she wrote.

> She described the team’s role at Twitter as working “to protect those at-risk in global conflicts & crises including Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, and to defend the needs of those particularly at risk of human rights abuse by virtue of their social media presence, such as journalists & human rights defenders.”

I am still unclear of how Twitter actually helps these people.

Global social media networks spanning multiple cultures, languages and value & political systems are probably too important to be controlled by a private, profit driven business anyway. Every different culture and community should have the power to manage information flow within their own community.