Twitter 'not safer' under Elon Musk, claims former trust and safety chief

By Team Newsable | First Published Nov 30, 2022, 8:59 AM IST

Yoel Roth was a Twitter veteran who helped guide the social media platform through several watershed decisions, including last year's decision to permanently suspend its most famous user, former US President Donald Trump.

Twitter's former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, on Tuesday, said that the social media company was not safe under the new leadership Elon Musk, warning that the company no longer had enough staff to handle safety-related tasks.

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After the billionaire's takeover, Roth tweeted that, by some measures, Twitter safety had improved under Musk's ownership. When asked if he still felt that way during an interview at the Knight Foundation conference, Roth asserted, 'No.'

Roth was a Twitter veteran who helped guide the social media platform through several watershed decisions, including last year's decision to permanently suspend its most famous user, former US President Donald Trump.

His departure alarmed advertisers, many of whom abandoned Twitter after Musk laid off half of the company's employees, including many in charge of content moderation.

According to Roth, before Musk took over Twitter, approximately 2,200 people globally were focused on content moderation work. He added that he did not know the number after the acquisition as the corporate directory had been disabled.

Under Musk, Twitter began to stray from its adherence to written and publicly available policies in favour of content decisions made unilaterally by Musk, which Roth cited as a reason for his resignation.

He explained, "One of my limits was that I wouldn't be needed, doing what I do, if Twitter were run by dictatorial edict rather than policy.

According to Roth, the revamp of the Twitter Blue premium subscription, which allows users to pay for a verified checkmark on their account, went live despite warnings and advice from the trust and safety team.

Spammers impersonating major public companies such as Eli Lilly, Nestle, and Lockheed Martin deluged the launch.

The latest launch was swiftly beset by spammers impersonating major public companies such as Eli Lilly, Nestle and Lockheed Martin.

Roth further explained that Twitter erred by limiting the distribution of a New York Post article about then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's son just before the 2020 election.

However, he defended Twitter's decision to permanently suspend Trump due to the risk of further incitement of violence following the riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Roth said, "We saw the most obvious example of how things moved from online to off." "We saw dead people in the Capitol." Musk announced on November 19 that Trump's account would be reinstated after a slim majority of Twitter users voted in favour of the move in a surprise poll.

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