Twitter’s Mean Guy Resigned, Biden’s FTC Threatens to Intervene

Yoel Roth, the head of Twitter’s Trust and Safety, has reportedly resigned from Twitter. The Washington Post reported he resigned today:

One of the most surprising was the company’s head of moderation and safety, Yoel Roth, who had become the public face of the company’s efforts to reassure users and advertisers that Twitter would not descend into a “free-for-all.” On Wednesday, he appeared on a Twitter Spaces public meeting to defend the company to advertisers alongside Musk.

Roth was one of a number of resignations including Chief Information Security Officer Lea Kissner, the company’s chief privacy officer and its chief compliance officer, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity, as well as tweets. Several other members of the site’s privacy and security unit also had resigned and those remaining were trying to stop a wave of abuse in the company’s expanded paid service, Twitter Blue, according to those people.

Biden’s FTC is threatening to intervene:

The privacy departures prompted a rare warning from the Federal Trade Commission, which has emerged as the government’s top Silicon Valley watchdog. It marked the second time in two days that a federal official has expressed concern about the chaotic developments at the company, coming less than 24 hours after President Biden said Musk’s relationships with other countries deserved scrutiny.

They said they are deeply concerned about the consent decree.

“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” said Douglas Farrar, the FTC’s director of public affairs. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

Yesterday, Joe Biden said he thought it worthwhile to investigate Elon Musk as a national security threat.

This next clip is also crazy:

Welcome to Joe Biden’s Banana Republic.

All of this could be scaring people like Roth away.

MUSK SAYS HE’S A MAN OF “HIGH INTEGRITY”

Roth is very biased, but Elon Musk defended him robustly when reporter Liz Wheeler commented on his nasty attacks aimed at conservatives.

“We’ve all made some questionable tweets, me more than most, but I want to be clear that I support Yoel,” Mr. Musk tweeted. “My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs.”

Mr. Musk is facing some serious challenges at Twitter. His revenue has dropped drastically, and advertisers are pausing ads to see how the moderation goes. And he has our corrupt president threatening him.

The Wall Street Journal is allegedly the source of the Roth story, but that might be a mistake. It looks like the story came from WaPo.

The WSJ wrote earlier today:

Mr. Roth, Mr. Musk, and others from Twitter this week held a video call with advertisers to assure them that moderation and security on the platform hasn’t changed, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Roth provided data and commentary to support his arguments during the conversation, the people said.

It’s hard to believe he resigned.

Just yesterday, Roth posted:

It seems like Roth resigned just as he’s needed.

We don’t like Mr.Roth. He’s very biased and nasty, but if he’s good at what he does and follows Musk’s guidelines, we understood Mr. Musk keeping him.

We won’t miss him and are glad he resigned.

HIS PAST BIASED TWEETS

PowerInbox