UN urges Elon Musk to ensure Twitter respects human rights

UN rights chief Volker Turk on Saturday urged Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk to make respect for human rights central to the social network after he sacked around half the company’s employees.

Reports of Musk laying off the platform’s entire human rights team were “not, from my perspective, an encouraging start”, Turk said in an open letter.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said he was writing with “concern and apprehension about our digital public square and Twitter’s role in it”.

He warned against propagating hate speech and misinformation and highlighted the need to protect user privacy.