Twitter Not Safer Under Elon Musk, Says Former Head of Trust and Safety

Twitter’s former head of belief and security Yoel Roth on Tuesday stated the social media firm was not safer below new proprietor Elon Musk, warning in his first interview since resigning this month that the corporate now not had sufficient workers for security work.

Roth had tweeted after Musk’s takeover that by some measures, Twitter security had improved below the billionaire’s possession.

Asked in an interview on the Knight Foundation convention on Tuesday whether or not he nonetheless felt that manner, Roth stated: “No.”

Roth was a Twitter veteran who helped steer the social media platform by way of a number of watershed selections, together with the transfer to completely droop its most well-known person, former US President Donald Trump, final yr.

His departure additional rattled advertisers, a lot of whom backed away from Twitter after Musk laid off half of the workers, together with many concerned with content material moderation.

Before Musk assumed the helm at Twitter, about 2,200 individuals globally have been targeted on content material moderation work, stated Roth. He stated he didn’t know the quantity after the acquisition as a result of the company listing had been turned off.

Twitter below Musk started to stray from its adherence to written and publicly accessible insurance policies towards content material selections made unilaterally by Musk, which Roth cited as a motive for his resignation.

“One of my limits was if Twitter starts being ruled by dictatorial edict rather than by policy … there’s no longer a need for me in my role, doing what I do,” he stated.

The revamp of the Twitter Blue premium subscription, which might enable customers to pay for a verified checkmark on their account, launched regardless of warnings and recommendation from the belief and security staff, Roth stated.

The launch was shortly beset by spammers impersonating main public corporations reminiscent of Eli Lilly, Nestle and Lockheed Martin.

Roth additionally stated Tuesday that Twitter erred in proscribing the dissemination of a New York Post article that made claims about then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son shortly earlier than the 2020 presidential election.

But he defended Twitter’s resolution to completely droop Trump for threat of additional incitement of violence after the riot on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“We saw the clearest possible example of what it looked like for things to move from online to off,” Roth stated. “We saw people dead in the Capitol.”

Musk tweeted on November 19 that Trump’s account can be reinstated after a slim majority voted in favour of the transfer in a shock Twitter ballot.

© Thomson Reuters 2022