Former Twitter “Truth and Safety” honcho, Yoel Roth, has allegedly fled his home in fear for his safety. At least, that is the claim made by CNN’s Oliver Darcy.
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety has fled his home due to an escalation in threats resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him, a person familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday.
Yoel Roth, who resigned from the social media company in November, has in recent weeks faced a storm of attacks and threats of violence following the release of the so-called “Twitter Files” — internal Twitter communications that new owner Musk has released through journalists including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.
Darcy, ever the dishonest hack that he is, cleverly conflates two different things.
First, Roth isn’t all that big of a deal in the Twitter Files®. Most of the little fascists quoted have their names redacted. The only name featured in a very controversial way is Legal, Policy, and Trust & Safety Lead Vijaya Gadde. She is the one who made up an excuse to rationalize banning President Trump from Twitter; see Latest Twitter Files Dump Shows Decision to Ban Trump Was Not Motivated By ‘Incitement.’
To the degree that Darcy is capable of being truthful, I think the real reason that Roth is on the lam, assuming that the story is true, is in the lede: “resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him.”
What might that criticism be? Fortunately, as a RedState reader, you already know that; if not, read Elon Musk Hints He Knows Who Is to Blame for Twitter’s Past Tolerance of Child Sexual Exploitation.
A few days ago, three of the main members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council resigned, blaming Musk for being unable to do their jobs. Their jobs were more focused on being meddling Karens preventing criticism of people and causes they supported rather than trying to stomp out the trade in Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM) on the platform, Twitter’s ‘Trust and Safety Council’ Resigns in Protest and Elon Musk Evaluates Their Performance. After they announced their resignation, Musk said on Twitter that they had been derelict in their duties.
That led to a conversation with child safety activists. Eliza Bleu, a victim of sex trafficking and someone who has been supportive of Musk’s efforts compared to those of Roth and his posse, discovered something interesting.
Musk replied, indicating his agreement and offering his own critique.
The quote is from Roth’s Ph. D. dissertation.
This is how Darcy describes it:
Roth has since been the subject of criticism and threats following the release of the Twitter Files. However, things took a dark turn over the weekend when Musk appeared to endorse a tweet that baselessly accused Roth of being sympathetic to pedophilia — a common trope used by conspiracy theorists to attack people online.
A person familiar with Roth’s situation told CNN threats made against the former Twitter employee escalated exponentially after Musk engaged in the pedophilia conspiracy theory.
So, no, the reason for flight had diddly squat to do with the Twitter Files. It had everything to do with Twitter’s reluctance, under Roth’s leadership, to take any meaningful action to fight child porn. Musk’s tweet didn’t “baselessly” accuse Roth of anything. It just suggested that a man who wrote a doctoral dissertation about his experiences using a gay hook-up app and who advocated making access to such apps easier for young teens to access might have a personal reluctance to crusade against child porn. More tellingly, there is nothing in his public statements or actions at Twitter to give anyone cause to disagree with Eliza Bleu and Musk. This is from Roth’s secret “dirty” Twitter account. It includes a tweet to him endorsing pedophilia.
Darcy refers to all of this as a “conspiracy theory,” but everyone had long noted that Twitter’s efforts to combat CSAM were minuscule compared the Facebook (Meta), Apple, and Google. Given the high visibility of the problem, one is left with two possible reasons: Twitter didn’t care, or it was sympathetic to the traffickers and did only what it had to do to avoid government regulation. There is a third possibility that they were just incompetent. While I think Roth’s little empire was incredibly malicious, I don’t think they were stupid or incompetent.
Is Roth really on the run? I doubt it, but I don’t really care. No one should receive death threats, but neither should one wink at child abuse. The risk he faces is also trivial. Unlike many of the people whom Twitter allowed to be doxxed and threatened while he was running the “Trust and Safety” show, he has the resources to purchase safety. Taylor Lorenz is not going to show up at his Mom’s house. If he is suffering from the pangs of a guilty conscience, that is probably all the punishment he will see in this life.