Twitter’s top content moderation official has departed amid the company’s struggles with its new owner Elon Musk’s erratic changes across the troubled social media platform. The development arrives as Twitter faces increasing regulatory scrutiny over its inadequate approach to content moderation under the new management.
The high-profile departure shows the turmoil at Twitter under billionaire Musk’s management is far from over.
The departed official, Ella Irwin, had been the head of trust and safety, who supervised content moderation. Irwin joined the company in June 2022.
Irwin’s resignation stems from the forthcoming release of a controversial documentary by conservative news outlet, The Daily Wire. The documentary, which, according to reports, features two instances of misgendering transgender people, triggered a cultural debate on Twitter last week. The platform had forewarned the documentary would be labelled as “hateful content”, which led to Wire’s CEO Jeremy Boreing protesting the video was being “suppressed”.
Boreing also raised questions about Musk’s free speech ideals. (It is important to note that Musk had quietly reversed Twitter’s hateful conduct policy for transgender users following his acquisition).
Later that day, Musk remarked that the content moderation decision concerning the documentary was a “mistake by many people” at Twitter, saying the video would be “definitely allowed”.
There has been no official statement on Irwin’s resignation by Twitter. The former official, however, did allude to her departure in a quote to the CNN, saying Musk “confirmed at least part of the reason for my departure in his tweet this morning”, which was related to the Wire controversy.
Irwin was not the only top official to resign in the wake of the controversy. AJ Brown, who was in charge of ensuring Twitter’s safety for brands in terms of advertising, and a program manager working on brand safety, also bowed out, according to reports.
Irwin’s departure leaves Twitter in a more critical position as authorities prepare to tighten the regulatory noose around the platform for its lack of adequate content moderation mechanisms, especially after Musk fired hundreds of moderators and slashed several crucial teams consisting of human rights activists and digital safety experts. Twitter has also been on the radar of the European Union (EU) after it pulled out of the institution’s voluntary Code of Practice on online disinformation.
Several leading social media corporations, including Meta, Google, and TikTok, are signed up to the EU’s disinformation code. It was introduced in June 2022 to address the exploitation of disinformation, enhance transparency, and curb the proliferation of bot accounts and malicious profiles.
Although voluntary, the EU has said the code would be considered significant in any evaluation of an online platform’s compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA), which obliges tech companies to adopt advanced measures to combat illegal online content.
