Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, has reportedly resigned from her position, becoming the second individual to leave the role since Elon Musk took over the company in November 2022.
The head of trust and safety is responsible for overseeing content moderation, a matter that has attracted significant attention since Musk assumed ownership of the platform. The BBC has reached out to both Twitter and Ms. Irwin for comment, but no official statements have been provided as of yet.
However, Ms. Irwin has confirmed her resignation to Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, although the exact reasons for her departure remain unclear.
Interestingly, her resignation comes just a day after Musk publicly criticized a content moderation decision made by Twitter. Musk denounced the platform’s choice to limit the visibility of a video due to allegations of misgendering, referring to it as “a mistake by many people at Twitter.”
In a tweet, he argued that while one may not necessarily agree with the use of someone’s preferred pronouns, not adhering to them is, at most, impolite and does not violate any laws.
This development follows Twitter’s recent withdrawal from the European Union’s voluntary code aimed at combatting disinformation, a decision that was made just a week ago.
Last month, Musk announced that Linda Yaccarino, the former head of advertising at NBCUniversal, would assume the position of Twitter’s new chief executive. However, she has yet to commence her role.
The Issue of Content Moderation
In-depth studies have highlighted a significant increase in hate speech during Musk’s tenure as owner, with the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a London-based campaign group, reporting a substantial rise in slurs since his takeover.
Furthermore, in December 2022, Twitter disbanded a volunteer group that provided guidance on issues related to self-harm, child abuse, and hate speech.
Despite these concerns, Twitter has taken steps to address content accuracy. Musk recently announced the expansion of the platform’s Community Notes feature to include images. Community Notes is a crowd-sourced fact-checking system that allows Twitter users to add comments providing context to tweets, often labeling them as false or misleading.
Twitter intends to further expand this feature to encompass video content in the future.
