Elon Musk has failed to scrub Twitter of child exploitation accounts — despite pledges

On Friday, MSNBC reported that a market for child exploitation content is thriving in the darker corners of Twitter — despite tech billionaire Elon Musk's promises to improve safety on the social network.

"'Priority #1,' Musk called it in a Nov. 20 tweet. He’s also criticized Twitter’s former leadership, claiming that they did little to address child sexual exploitation, and that he intended to change things," reported Ben Goggin, Lora Kolodny, and David Ingam. "But since that declaration, at least dozens of accounts have continued to post hundreds of tweets in aggregate using terms, abbreviations and hashtags indicating the sale of what Twitter calls child sexual exploitation material, according to a count of just a single day’s tweets. The signs and signals are well known among experts and law enforcement agencies that work to stop the spread of such material."

"The tweets reviewed by NBC News offer to sell or trade content that is commonly known as child pornography or child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The tweets do not show CSAM, and NBC News did not view any CSAM in the course of reporting this article," said the report, noting that "Some tweets and accounts have been up for months and predate Musk’s takeover. They remained live on the platform as of Friday morning" — but that large portions of it began under Musk, as well.

"A representative for the U.S. child exploitation watchdog the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that the number of reports of CSAM detected and flagged by the company remains unchanged since Musk’s takeover," said the report. "Twitter also disbanded the company’s Trust and Safety council, which included nonprofits focused on addressing CSAM."

This comes after Musk has come under fire for a number of controversies in his management of Twitter. He has slashed the company's workforce with mass layoffs, including of people whose jobs he apparently didn't understand. He also came under fire after Twitter banned several journalists who report on him, some of whom simply referenced his decision to ban an account that tracked his private jet.

Last month, reports indicated Musk is looking for a new CEO to take over the operations of Twitter for him, allowing him to step back from the company he purchased for $45 billion in the middle of last year.