Former Musk ally explains resignation from Twitter, cites “dictatorial edict”
Enlarge / Former Twitter executive Yoel Roth's Twitter account. (credit: Yoel Roth)
During Elon Musk's first two weeks as the owner of Twitter, he seemed to have an ally in Yoel Roth, who had been the social network's head of trust and safety for seven years. Roth defended some of Musk's early actions and touted Twitter's work to crack down on hateful conduct. Musk pointed his followers to Roth's tweets explaining Twitter's content moderation work and said Roth has "high integrity"-even though they disagreed on whether former President Trump should have been suspended.
"I recommend following @yoyoel for the most accurate understanding of what's happening with trust & safety at Twitter," Musk wrote on October 31.
But Roth quit on November 10, a day after Musk rolled out the $8-per-month Twitter Blue subscription that came with verification checkmarks. Musk had ignored prescient warnings from Roth's team and was forced to backtrack from paid verification after scammers eagerly paid $8 for checkmarks that made it easy to impersonate prominent accounts. Musk's revamped Twitter Blue was set for a relaunch this week but was delayed again.