Ex-employee reveals three reasons why Musk’s Twitter can’t happen

A former Twitter employee, who once held the keys to the kingdom, has provided the most in-depth insight into why staff are fleeing Musk’s platform.

A former Twitter employee has given perhaps the most in-depth insight into the Elon Musk takeover, detailing why he left a top job and sharing some parting thoughts on the platform’s new direction after the tech billionaire took the reins.

Yoel Roth, former head of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team who left the company on his own volition, recently penned an op-ed in the New York Times detailing his exit and sharing an interesting forecast for the platform.

He explained his team’s role was to draft Twitter’s rules and apply them consistently to hundreds of millions of tweets daily.

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Yoel Roth is the former head of trust and safety at Twitter.

“In my more than seven years at the company, we exposed government-backed troll farms meddling in elections, introduced new tools for contextualising dangerous misinformation and, yes, banned President Trump from the service,’ Roth explained.

“The Cornell professor Tarleton Gillespie called teams like mine the “custodians of the internet.

New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.

Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.

You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022

“The work of online sanitation is unrelenting and contentious.”

Roth went on to recount his short stint at post-Musk Twitter.

“Since closing the deal on Oct‌. 27‌‌, many of the changes implemented by Mr Musk and his team have been sudden and alarming for employees and users alike, including rapid-fire lay-offs and an ill-fated foray into reinventing Twitter’s verification system,” he wrote.

Leading into and during the takeover, Musk spruiked the importance of “free speech to democracy”, lauding Twitter as a “digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated” which many believed meant relaxed rules and content moderation.

But Roth said despite recent office closures, further resignations, the trending of #RIPTwitter and questions over whether or not Musk’s “skeleton crew” could steady the platform, content moderation has stayed “much the same” since the takeover.

A raft of commercial pressure and regulations might mean Musk’s big dreams for Twitter could be on ice. Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris

“Twitter’s rules continue to ban a wide range of “lawful but awful” speech,” Roth explained.

“Mr Musk has insisted publicly that the company’s practices and policies are unchanged.

“Are we just in the early days — or has the self-declared free speech absolutist had a change of heart?

“The truth is that even Elon Musk’s brand of radical transformation has unavoidable limits.”

One of a series of binding clauses, Roth said, would be keeping advertisers- who generate 90 per cent of the platform’s revenue – on side.

“Twitter has little choice but to operate in a way that won’t imperil the revenue streams that keep the lights on. This has already proved to be challenging,” Roth speculated, claiming a “wave of racist and antisemitic trolling emerged on Twitter” soon after the deal closed.

“Wary marketers, including those at General Mills, Audi and Pfizer, slowed down or paused ad spending on the platform, kicking off a crisis within the company to protect precious ad revenue,” Roth said.

Update on our efforts to combat hateful conduct: We've not only mitigated the recent surge in harmful behavior, but have reduced impressions on this content in Search by ~95% relative to even prior baseline levels. We're continuing our work to make Twitter safer every day. https://t.co/g4X6ue0f8Wpic.twitter.com/lK5fMRWCGb

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 9, 2022

He claimed. Musk ordered the Trust and Safety team to “move aggressively” to remove hate speech content in response.

“Before my departure, I shared data about Twitter’s enforcement of hateful conduct showing that, by some measures, Twitter was actually safer under Mr Musk than it had been before,’ he explained.”

“His ability to make decisions unilaterally about the site’s future is constrained by a marketing industry he neither controls nor has managed to win over.”

It was Roth’s team who made the call to have Donald Trump banned from Twitter - but will Musk see his return? Photo: Alon Skuy

And Roth said advertisers weren’t the only parties Musk would need to keep happy on his mission to “free the bird”.

“Twitter remains bound by the laws and regulations of the countries in which it operates,” Roth explained.

“Amid the spike in racial slurs on Twitter in the days after the acquisition, the European Union’s chief platform regulator took to the site to remind Mr Musk that, in Europe, an unmoderated free-for-all won’t fly.”

Members of the US Congress and the Federal Trade Commission also took umbrage with some of the changes.

A @washingtonpost reporter was able to create a verified account impersonating me—I’m asking for answers from @elonmusk who is putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation. Twitter must explain how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again. pic.twitter.com/R4r7p6mduP

— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) November 11, 2022

“Mr Musk’s principle of keying Twitter’s policies on local laws could push the company to censor speech it has been loath to restrict in the past, including political dissent,” Roth wrote.

“Regulators have significant tools at their disposal to enforce their will on Twitter and on Mr Musk.

“Penalties for noncompliance with Europe’s Digital Services Act could total as much as 6 per cent of the company’s annual revenue. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has shown an increasing willingness to exact significant fines for noncompliance with their orders (like a blockbuster $5 billion fine imposed on Facebook in 2019).”

Roth also said Apple and Google phone and tablet app stores, which have community guidelines of their own, also pose a massive risk to Twitter’s bottom line.

Tick them off or violate their T & Cs, Roth warned, and expulsion from the app stores would prove “catastrophic”.

Twitter is bound by a forces perhaps unforeseen by Musk – according to Roth. Photo: Constanza Hevia

As for why Roth left Twitter after surviving the job cull?

“A Twitter whose policies are defined by unilateral edict has little need for a trust and safety function dedicated to its principled development,” he said.

“To truly understand the shape of Twitter going forward, I’d encourage looking not just at the choices the company makes but at how Mr Musk makes them.

“Should it materialise, will the moderation council represent more than just the loudest, predominantly American voices complaining about censorship — including, critically, the approximately 80 per cent of Twitter users who reside outside of the United States?

“Will the company continue to invest in features like Community Notes, which bring Twitter users into the work of platform governance?

“Will Mr Musk’s tweets announcing policy changes become less frequent and abrupt?”

Roth believed one of Musk’s most significant challenges was balancing his goals with the “practical realities of life on Apple and Google’s internet”.

“It’s no easy task for the employees who have chosen to remain,” he said.

“And as I departed the company, the calls from the app review teams had already begun.”

Another ex-senior staffer recently unloaded on the platform revealing internal rumours that a “new vision” could include Twitter hosting adult content for subscribers.

Why I left @twitter or rather why I did not sign up for “extremely hardcore” Twitter 2.0

🧵

— Peter Clowes (@peterclowes) November 18, 2022

“I left because I no longer knew what I was staying for,” Senior Software Engineer Peter Clowes said.

“Previously, I was staying for the people, the vision, and of course, the money (lets all be honest). All of those were radically changed or uncertain.”

“Additionally, there were rumours the new vision might be radically different. Not just subscription-based but possibly having adult content be a core component of subscription offerings.

“That is a BIG departure and one I wouldn’t get behind.”

Mr Clowes, who also left Twitter on his own terms, said he felt there was “no clear upside” for those who stuck around at the platform.

“So my friends are gone, the vision is murky, there is a storm coming and no financial upside. What would you do?” he asked.