We’ve seen Elon Musk wading in to try to deal with the mess that the previous heads of the company had left behind.
Musk fired some of the errant leadership immediately, then cut the staff in order to try to save costs. He’s also bringing it back to a real workplace environment, and not the spa environment-with red wine on tap-that it had previously been. Now, people will no longer be allowed to work from home and are required to work a forty-hour work week — like most other people.
Musk was listening to complaints about problems about conservative shadow banning, showing he was going to be a hands-on owner. While liberals were freaking out and talking about fleeing the site because they no longer thought that they could control the narrative, the evidence showed that user growth under Musk in now exploding. So much for liberal threats. Suddenly, the narrative even seemed to not be as obvious in the “trending list” on Twitter anymore either.
But now, there may be another big move that could ultimately serve Twitter well.
After Elon Musk took over Twitter, he seemed to give his imprimatur to Yoel Roth, the guy who had been the head of “Trust and Safety” for the site. “Trust and safety” dealt with things on the site like abuse, harassment, and “election security” in the past, before Musk came in.
But many pointed out to Musk that perhaps Roth wasn’t the best guy to render objective judgment on the platform, given the things that he has previously tweeted. They certainly indicate there could be a big problem in how he would exercise that judgment.
If you can’t read that last tweet of his, Roth called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a “personality-free bag of farts.”
Roth was also involved in the Hunter Biden laptop story when he was the head of Twitter’s Site Integrity Team.
Yoel Roth, the head of Twitter’s Site Integrity Team, cited the information from U.S. intelligence officials to justify Twitter’s decision to block access to a series of New York Post articles published in October detailing emails found on Biden’s laptop. [….]
The commission pointed to Roth’s testimony that U.S. officials warned him individuals close to political campaigns would likely be targeted in “hack-and-leak” operations close to the election. Roth said he met frequently throughout 2020 with government officials to discuss election security. He said he learned in one of the meetings that “there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.”
On Thursday, there were multiple reports that Roth, as well as the head of sales, Robin Wheeler, were no longer with the company.
I’m not sure why he was there as long as he was after Elon came in, given his leanings. Maybe Roth just wanted to hold onto the job, which must have been paying very well. Others had thoughts.
Did someone finally get the message that perhaps there could be a problem there? Folks on the right certainly found his leaving another positive sign.
Meanwhile, folks on the left and in the media bemoaned the effect this would have on “safety,” when the “platform controls the entire news pipeline.”
Yes, that’s the problem — that it does “control” the news; it hasn’t been “safe” for real news that went up against the liberal narrative. But now, it’s a new day, and no wonder folks are cheering over it.
