UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Monday that he doesn’t care so much regarding who runs a social media platform like Twitter as how it’s run.
“I don’t have personal feelings towards who runs a platform,” he said. “I’m very interested in how the platform is run.”
The UN chief also thinks there should be regulations specifying responsibilities in social media, as news agencies, newspapers and broadcasters are responsible for their content.
“My recommendation to anyone with a platform is to ensure that freedom of expression, especially of journalists, is respected and that hate speech, neo-Nazism, white supremacism, other forms of extremism, do not find their way through these platforms,” he said at a year-end press conference.
Mr Guterres was asked if he was considering shutting down his Twitter account and meeting with its owner, Elon Musk.
“I will do what my conscience tells me to do when it makes sense,” he replied. “So at the moment I think the most reasonable thing is to keep the account as it is, because the account also has an important role to play. But of course we will be attentive to the situation.”
He added that, for him, the issue is not regarding meeting people like Mr. Musk, but regarding establishing clear rules on the responsibilities of social media platforms.
“We live in a kind of legal vacuum in which these platforms can do whatever they want, can transmit whatever they want, and there are no legal consequences,” lamented the secretary general.
Elon Musk, at the center of internet social media controversy, has launched a Twitter poll on whether he should step down as chief executive of the company he just acquired, following the termination of the accounts of several journalists, then the reinstatement of some of their accounts.
According to published information, the poll recommended his resignation.
