Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk acknowledged Wednesday that the stark reality before his acquisition was that Twitter interfered in elections through its content moderation policies.
Musk’s explosive claim came in response to comments made by Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and security, who indicated that the social media platform was not secure under the leadership of the Tesla CEO. Roth was talking at a Knight Establishment meeting on Tuesday when he made sense of why he left Twitter, blaming Musk for running the organization like a tyrant.
One of my limitations was that if Twitter began to be governed by dictatorial orders rather than policy, I would no longer be needed in my role, Roth said, according to Reuters. As head of trust and security, Roth was responsible for major content moderation decisions, including banning former President Donald Trump from the platform and suppressing the New York Post’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
His decision to leave the company was part of a mass exodus of Twitter employees who disagreed with Musk’s free-speech absolutist vision or were locked into drastic cost-cutting measures implemented by the billionaire.
Twitter’s content moderation policies have been strongly criticized by free speech advocates, particularly those on the right, who have accused the company of unilaterally enforcing its rules against conservatives. The suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story occurred in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election and was believed by many conservatives to be motivated by a desire to shield then-candidate Joe Biden from scrutiny of his family’s foreign business dealings.
Twitter has not shown itself to be secure all through the past 10 years and has lost the trust of clients. The past group of ‘Trust and Security’ is a shame, so the thing is being done now gotten no opportunity to do equity.
Musk wrote in response that the harsh reality, as longtime users know, is that Twitter has failed trust and security and interfered in elections for far too long. More effective would be transparent and fair Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.