Twitter Faces Criticism After Reinstating Account That Posted Child Sex Abuse Image

Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter, is facing criticism after reinstating a right-wing account that had previously been suspended for posting images of child sexual abuse. 

The account in question, Dom Lucre, with nearly 600,000 followers was banned after he posted two screenshots of a video depicting child sexual abuse on July 22. The post was about Peter Scully, an Australian man sentenced to life in prison for sexually abusing children.

Four days later, Mr. Lucre was suspended from the platform four days later, as Twitter's policy indicates “zero tolerance towards any material that features or promotes child sexual exploitation.''

Soon after, Mr. Lucre's right-wing supporters complained about it and demanded his reinstatement.

Responding to the outrage, Mr. Musk wrote, ''Only people on our CSE team have seen those pictures. For now, we will delete those posts and reinstate the account.''

Only people on our CSE team have seen those pictures. For now, we will delete those posts and reinstate the account.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 26, 2023

The decision to reinstate the account attracted considerable criticism from a lot of users.

"Have been tagged a few times on this one, so let me just say: It's insane to write 'we have zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation' while also arbitrarily reinstating accounts that share CSAM," Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and safety, posted on the social media site BlueSky on Wednesday.

Earlier, the social media site was blocked in Indonesia for violating local pornography and gambling laws. 

Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Informatics in a statement said that the site was restricted as the domain had been previously used by sites that did not adhere to the country's strict laws against "negative" content such as pornography and gambling.