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Twitter logo: Another departure from a top post
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Amid allegations of lax crackdown on hate speech and misinformation, Twitter has lost its trust and security manager. She gave up her job as the person responsible for moderating the content, Ella Irwin told Reuters. She did not provide any further details. Irwin had only taken over her previous post in November 2022 after the takeover by Elon Musk and supported her new boss on his controversial lurching course.
Her predecessor as head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, left the company in December and then sharply criticized Musk for his change of course. The billionaire insinuated Roth in a tweet that he advocates children's access to pornographic content.
Last week, Twitter pulled out of a voluntary EU code of conduct to combat misinformation. EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton warned the company: "You can run away, but you can't hide." For example, the fight against disinformation will become a legal obligation with the entry into force of the Digital Services Act at the end of August.
Musk, the self-proclaimed "absolutist of free speech," had taken over Twitter in October 2022 and then largely realigned it. In addition to mass layoffs, an amnesty for previously banned users such as former US President Donald Trump caused a stir. Instead, accounts that posted publicly available information about Elon Musk's flight movements were blocked. With his decisions, the billionaire scared off numerous advertisers who do not want to see their ads and brands next to controversial content.
The company is still not coming to rest. Just last week, it was announced that chief technology officer Foad Dabiri had left the company, shortly after Twitter embarrassed itself with technical problems in broadcasting a conversation with Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. According to a current estimate, the company is currently worth 15 billion dollars – just under a third of the purchase price when it was acquired last year.
tmk/Reuters