Twitter's head of trust and safety resigns

Twitter’s head of trust and safety resigns

Twitter’s Ella Irwin has resigned as the company’s head of trust and safety, confirming her departure to Reuters on Thursday.

Irwin stepped into the role following the departure of Yoel Roth in November, shortly after Elon Musk acquired the business for $44 billion.

Irwin has yet to offer any public statement on her decision to leave the company, which she joined in June 2022.

The departure of the senior executive is the latest episode in a chaotic seven months since Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform in October.

After an early move to dismiss Twitter’s CEO and board of directors, the billionaire entrepreneur reiterated his support for free speech before allowing the reinstatement of many accounts previously banned for posting offensive content such as hate speech.

Many big advertisers reportedly abandoned Twitter as they were nervous about appearing alongside such questionable content, though Musk claimed recently that many brands have now returned to the platform.

There was also much confusion after Musk tried to overhaul the verification system and Twitter Blue late last year, forcing the team to suspend sign-ups to Twitter’s premium tier until a workable solution could be found.

Musk oversaw a large number of layoffs, too, that resulted in Twitter’s workforce shrinking by more than half. Some considered subsequent Twitter outages as the result of the loss of key engineers who, had they still been at the company, could potentially have resolved the issues in a more timely fashion. Musk said the layoffs were necessary as Twitter was close to going bankrupt.

Irwin’s unexpected departure comes as former NBCUniversal ad sales chief Linda Yaccarino takes over as Twitter’s CEO from Musk, who said in a recent interview that running Twitter has been a “roller coaster” and, at times, “quite painful.”

Musk will be hoping that Yaccarino can steady the ship, though the departure of Twitter’s head of trust and safety on Thursday suggests there may still be some rough waters to navigate.

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