A leader within Twitter’s ranks has confirmed some of the company’s controversial content moderation activity has been halted since Musk took over the company last week.
Yoel Roth, who runs Twitter’s safety and integrity, responded to a rumor that employees were unable to access moderation tools following the Musk-takeover.
Roth wrote, “This is exactly what we (or any company) should be doing in the midst of a corporate transition to reduce opportunities for insider risk.” He also said, “We’re still enforcing our rules at scale.”
This is exactly what we (or any company) should be doing in the midst of a corporate transition to reduce opportunities for insider risk. We’re still enforcing our rules at scale. https://t.co/CZudS4gBqo
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 1, 2022
The tweets were responding to a Bloomberg reporter who claimed an anonymous source said “a wide swath” of Twitter employees were “frozen” out of content moderation tools.
NEW: A wide swath of Twitter’s trust & safety team had access to content moderation/enforcement tools frozen last week. Usually, hundreds of people on the team could remove posts w/misinfo, hate speech etc. It’s now down to 15 people. Scoop w/@KurtWagner8 @daveyalba @EdLudlow
— Jackie Davalos (@jackiedavalos1) November 1, 2022
Content moderation on Twitter has been blamed for the suppression of right-wing perspectives, preferring to push out left-leaning content. Most notably, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted to the active suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election cycle.
Musk has been an active critic of the platform’s content moderation policies, claiming he is a “free speech absolutist.” However, he has gone on the record saying Twitter will not become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
Upon taking over Twitter, Musk fired many high-profile Twitter employees. Of those let go was Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former content moderation chief. Gadde is suspected of being directly responsible for throttling Trump’s account during the 2020 election.
