Posted by - News Worthy -
on - November 30, 2022 -
Filed in - Impacts -
twitter Elon Musk resigned trust and safety -
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The leader of Twitter’s head of trust and safety who resigned last week following Election Day had played a role in the platform’s censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story before Elon Musk’s takeover.
An executive confirmed Roth’s resignation to coworkers on an internal messaging board seen by The Associated Press. Both The National Review and The Washington Free Beacon noted in their coverage of Roth’s departure post-Election Day 2022 that he headed the department responsible for censoring the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story two years ago ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
With Roth at the helm them, Twitter’s Site Integrity team prevented users from sharing the Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop publicly, as well as barred users from sending the link to the story to others through private messages.
In 2021, Roth later justified the decision, explaining that he met with government officials frequently in 2020 to discuss election security, and through those meetings learned of "rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden" close to the election.
Years earlier, Roth had previously referred to Trump and his team as "ACTUAL NAZIS," mocked Trump supporters by saying that "we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason," and called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a "personality-free bag of farts."
@yournameClick To TweetThe “you are not the right kind of feminist” backlash to yesterday’s marches has begun. Did we learn nothing from this election?
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) January 22, 2017
In September 2016, Roth tweeted, "I’ve never donated to a presidential campaign before, but I just gave $100 to Hillary for America. We can’t f--- around anymore."
Despite firing most executives, including the chief executive, financial chief and legal chief, when he assumed ownership on Twitter on Oct. 27, Musk seemingly defended Roth’s past remarks on Trump.
@yournameClick To TweetWachtell & Twitter board deliberately hid this evidence from the court. Stay tuned, more to come … pic.twitter.com/CifaNvtRtt
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
Roth stayed with the company ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. On Wednesday, he tweeted, "Update on our efforts to combat hateful conduct: We’ve not only mitigated the recent surge in harmful behavior, but have reduced impressions on this content in Search by ~95% relative to even prior baseline levels. We’re continuing our work to make Twitter safer every day."
@yournameClick To TweetUpdate on our efforts to combat hateful conduct: We've not only mitigated the recent surge in harmful behavior, but have reduced impressions on this content in Search by ~95% relative to even prior baseline levels. We're continuing our work to make Twitter safer every day. https://t.co/g4X6ue0f8W pic.twitter.com/lK5fMRWCGb
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 9, 2022
The bombshell news story by the Post about the laptop’s contents was infamously censored from Facebook and Twitter just weeks ahead of the 2020 presidential election.