Yoel Roth, 34, the former director of trust and safety at Twitter, and his 44-year-old partner have been evicted from their house after CEO Elon Musk distorted Roth’s research thesis on minors and sexual behavior in a series of tweets.
Roth’s words received an immediate response once they were reposted, and several of his relatives and friends were compelled to suspend their Twitter accounts as a result.
While attending the University of Pennsylvania in 2016, Roth completed his dissertation with the working title Gay Data.
When it came to choosing which posts to delete and which accounts to suspend while working at Twitter, Roth had a significant influence.
As part of what Musk has referred to as the “Twitter Files,” conservative writers Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss have recently exposed snippets of his chats.
Musk, 51, made a reference to the QAnon theory in a tweet about Roth that falsely alleges Democratic Party elites are in control of a child sex abuse network.
Musk tweeted on Saturday along with an image of Roth’s PhD thesis, “Looks like Yoel is arguing in support of youngsters being allowed to access adult Internet services.”
Roth said that rather than being completely outlawed, homosexual dating apps like Grindr could modify their platforms to enable teens to utilize them.
He also responded to a tweet from Roth from 2010 in which Roth posed the question, “May high school pupils ever meaningfully agree to sex with their teachers?” and included a link to a piece that discussed the legal age at which students can provide such permission.
The myth that LGBTQ+ individuals are sexual predators who are “grooming” youngsters in order to abuse them has long been promoted by far-right and extremist speakers.
‘The effect of this pervasive hateful language has been an increase in harassment, threats, and violence against the LGBTQ+ community,’ the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Extremism said in September.
According to The Washington Post, when Musk posted his tweets, his supporters harassed the academics who read the dissertation.
As a veteran member of Twitter’s policy team, Roth was one of the few senior executives to stick around during the tumultuous first weeks after the approval of Musk’s $44 billion purchase.
However, Roth stated that a trolling campaign that promoted hate speech was stopped by Twitter’s safety team, and that there had been a discernible drop in the frequency of such behavior after the event. According to Roth’s tweet at the time, the business terminated 1,500 accounts, many of which were “repeat bad offenders.”
It seems like Musk’s flip against Roth happened rather quickly. Shortly after the acquisition, Roth joined Musk on a teleconference to reassure advertising. I want to make clear that I support Yoel, Musk tweeted as recently as late October. He seems to have excellent moral character, and everyone has the right to their own political views.
Like Musk, Yoel treated Musk with respect and even stood up for him when he left Twitter.
“I believe one of the tough things with Elon, in particular, is that people really want him to be the antagonist of the tale, and they want him to be categorically incorrect and awful, and everything he says is deceitful,” adds the author. I have to admit that wasn’t how I interacted with him.
Twitter also disbanded its Trust and Safety Council on Monday night. This group of volunteers from all over the world, including civil rights activists, academics, and leaders in the field, had been advising the company on how to lessen hate speech, child exploitation, and other issues on the social media platform.
According to many members, the council was supposed to meet with Twitter executives this evening, but just before the meeting was to begin, Twitter sent the group an email announcing that it was dissolving the organization.
Due to worries about reprisals, the council members talked on the condition of anonymity. The council is “not the appropriate structure to achieve this,” according to the email, which said that Twitter was “reevaluating how best to introduce external perspectives.”
The email, which was signed “Twitter,” said that “our effort to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving quicker and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to encourage your thoughts going ahead about how to accomplish this aim.”
»Yoel Roth flees his $1.1m home when Elon Musk tweeted his thesis«