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Nov 29 (Reuters) - Twitter's former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth on Tuesday said the social media company was not safer under new owner Elon Musk, warning in his first interview since resigning this month that the company no longer had enough staff for safety work. Roth had tweeted after Musk's takeover that by some measures, Twitter safety had improved under the billionaire's ownership. His departure further rattled advertisers, many of whom backed away from Twitter after Musk laid off half of the staff, including many involved with content moderation. Before Musk assumed the helm at Twitter, about 2,200 people globally were focused on content moderation work, said Roth. Musk tweeted on Nov. 19 that Trump's account would be reinstated after a slim majority voted in favor of the move in a surprise Twitter poll.

☆ Several left wing activists had their Twitter accounts suspended after a false-report campaign by far-right users, report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Prominent left-wing Twitter accounts have been banned after false reports, The Intercept reported. Far-right activists have launched a campaign to report left-wing accounts for false violations, it reported. Right-wing activists coordinated a campaign to mass report left-wing Twitter users for fake violations to get their accounts suspended — Loder's account was mentioned on a list of accounts to report. Far-right users like journalist Andy Ngo on Twitter urged Musk to address the "large number of Antifa accounts" operating on Twitter. Loder told Intercept that his account was suspended just 90 minutes after Musk responded to Ngo on Twitter.

☆ Twitter must comply with Europe’s platform rules, EU digital chief warns Musk in virtual meeting
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter has “huge work ahead” to meet its obligations under the Digital Services Act, Europe’s new platform regulation, said Thierry Breton, the EU’s digital chief, in a readout of his meeting with Musk. European commissioner for internal market Thierry Breton (L) attends the weekly College meeting at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on November 9, 2022. The meeting between Breton and Musk follows an earlier discussion the two had in May in which Musk expressed support for the European regulations. In addition to EU scrutiny, Musk’s Twitter could also face additional pressure at home. Yellen added that it could be appropriate for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review Musk’s Twitter takeover.

☆ Twitter's former trust & safety chief, who once said the platform was safer under Elon Musk, now says he believes the opposite
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Samantha Delouya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Twitter is not safer under Elon Musk, according to Twitter's former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth. The statement is a reversal for Roth, who wrote the opposite in a New York Times op-ed earlier this month. Twitter said it would stop enforcing its COVID-19 misleading info policy, which Roth called "damaging." There is no 'set it and forget it' when it comes to trust and safety." Twitter laid off 50% of its staff earlier this month, and Musk has since laid off even more workers.

☆ Twitter's former trust and safety head says it might be hard for Elon Musk to understand the impact of his tweets because he's 'the richest man on the planet'
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Samantha Delouya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Former Twitter executive Yoel Roth said Musk's wealth might stop him from seeing the "consequences" of his tweets. Since taking over Twitter, Musk has sent several tweets containing inaccurate information. Yoel Roth, who was Twitter's former head of trust & safety until earlier this month, spoke at the Knight Foundation's "Informed" conference on Tuesday about Musk's use of the platform. "That's the core of what the work of trust and safety is. "I think it may be hard to understand the consequences that his tweets can have for the people he targets," Roth said.

☆ Twitter's former trust and safety head said it's unfair to paint Elon Musk as the 'villain' of Twitter's story
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Samantha Delouya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Twitter's former trust & safety chief said Musk wasn't a "villain" in his experience at Twitter. Musk could've made bad decisions in the early days of his tenure but declined, said the former exec. "I don't know that he has a lot of people around him who push back on him," he said of Musk. But Roth said the first few days of Musk's tenure "were sort of storm clouds, and they parted." Musk had multiple opportunities to make bad and damaging decisions at Twitter but declined, according to Roth.

☆ Twitter is less safe due to Elon Musk’s management style, says former top official
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

CNN Business —Twitter owner Elon Musk’s dictatorial management style risks driving the company headlong into unforced business blunders, content moderation disasters and the degradation of core platform features that help keep vulnerable users safe, according to a former top Twitter official who led the company’s content moderation before abruptly resigning this month. For two weeks after Musk closed his purchase of Twitter, Roth presented himself as a voice of stability and calm at the center of a company undergoing dramatic change. Roth knew that by remaining at the company, Musk was using him to help keep advertisers from abandoning the platform. In a subsequent New York Times op-ed, Roth said his reason for leaving came down to Musk’s highly personal and improvisational approach to content moderation. Before Musk took over Twitter, Roth wrote down several commitments to himself that would trigger the decision to quit.

☆ Elon Musk claims Apple has threatened to remove the Twitter app
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter owner Elon Musk claimed on Monday in a series of tweets that Apple had threatened to remove the Twitter app from the App Store as part of its app review moderation process. "Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won't tell us why," Musk tweeted. Apple's App Store is the only way to distribute software to iPhones. If the Twitter app were pulled, the social network would lose one of its main distribution platforms, although the service is available for the web. In addition, Apple requires iPhone app makers to pay between 15% and 30% of any digital goods sold through their apps.

☆ Elon Musk claims Apple has ‘threatened to withhold’ Twitter from its app store
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

New York CNN Business —Elon Musk on Monday claimed that Apple has “threatened” to pull Twitter from its iOS app store, a move that could be devastating to the company Musk just acquired for $44 billion. He also criticized Apple’s size, claimed it engages in “censorship,” and called out the 30% transaction fee Apple charges large app developers to be listed in its app store. Parler was returned to Apple’s app store three months later after updating its content moderation practices. “If you’re looking to shock and offend people, the App Store isn’t the right place for your app,” the guidelines state. Roth said the company’s failure to adhere to Google and Apple’s app store rules could be “catastrophic.”And last weekend, the head of Apple’s app store, Phil Schiller, deleted his Twitter account.

☆ Chinese bots spammed Twitter with porn, which buried news about COVID-19 protests in China, report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Chinese bot accounts posted spam, which buried news about COVID protests, per the Washington Post. Protests against strict COVID-19 restrictions have erupted in several areas of China. A US government contractor told the Post that by the evening, the feed was "fifty percent porn, 50 percent protests." Some of these acts have been dormant for years, only to become active yesterday after protests broke out in China." Twitter's trust and safety team is likely in disarray.

☆ Musk plans to relaunch Twitter premium service, again
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-25 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

LONDON — Elon Musk said Friday that Twitter plans to relaunch its premium service that will offer different colored check marks to accounts next week, in a fresh move to revamp the service after a previous attempt backfired. Twitter previously suspended the premium service, which under Musk granted blue-check labels to anyone paying $8 a month, because of a wave of imposter accounts. Originally, the blue check was given to government entities, corporations, celebrities and journalists verified by the platform to prevent impersonation. In the latest version, companies will get a gold check, governments will get a gray check, and individuals who pay for the service, whether or not they’re celebrities, will get a blue check, Musk said Friday. It’s also likely to put the company on a crash course with European regulators seeking to clamp down on harmful online content with tough new rules.

The European headquarters of Twitter in Dublin, one of the company’s hubs from where staff have left since Elon Musk took over. Elon Musk‘s move to purge Twitter Inc. employees who don’t embrace his vision has led to a wave of departures among policy and safety-issue staffers around the globe, sparking questions from regulators in key jurisdictions about the site’s continued compliance efforts. Scrutiny has been particularly close in Europe, where officials have in recent years assumed a greater role in regulating big tech companies. Staff departures in recent days include dozens of people spread across units such as government policy, legal affairs and Twitter’s “trust and safety” division, responsible for functions like drafting content-moderation rules, according to current and former employees, postings on social media and emails sent to work addresses of people who had worked at Twitter that recently bounced back. They have left from hubs including Dublin, Singapore and San Francisco.

☆ Elon Musk's 2-year-old son ran around Twitter's office and played with toys while his dad talked to advisors about moderation, report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-24 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk's son X Æ a-Xii was present during Twitter meetings after the purchase went through, WaPo reported. Two-year-old X Æ a-Xii, Musk's first child with Grimes, ran round while he met with Yoel Roth, per WaPo. The Post reported that toys were scattered round the room and X Æ a-Xii ran around. X Æ a-Xii may have been at Twitter's HQ to attend the office Halloween party that day, where some staff brought their children. X Æ a-Xii, who he had with his musician and ex-partner Grimes, was Musk's seventh child.

☆ Elon Musk says Twitter is granting ‘amnesty’ to suspended accounts
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-24 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk's Twitter account displayed on a mobile with Elon Musk in the background are seen in this illustration. New Twitter owner Elon Musk said Thursday that he is granting "amnesty" for suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation. In the month since Musk took over Twitter, groups that monitor the platform for racist, anti-Semitic and other toxic speech say it's been on the rise on the world's de facto public square. On Oct. 28, the day after he took control, Musk tweeted that no suspended accounts would be reinstated until Twitter formed a "content moderation council" with diverse viewpoints that would consider the cases. A report from the European Union published Thursday said Twitter took longer to review hateful content and removed less of it this year compared with 2021.

☆ Twitter's trust and safety team held a one-day sickout to protest against Elon Musk's policies, report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter's trust and safety team staged a sickout on November 10, the Washington Post reported. This was in protest to Musk initially ignoring their warnings about the risks of Twitter Blue. Just weeks earlier, on the day he completed the purchase of the company, Musk fired Roth's predecessor Vijaya Gadde, who headed Twitter's trust and safety team for 11 years. The rollout of Twitter Blue has been paused in recent weeks, with users currently unable to sign up for the premium service. Musk appointed executive Ella Irwin as the new head of trust and safety last week.

☆ 50 of Twitter's top 100 advertisers have pulled out of the platform since Elon Musk took over, report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Half of Twitter's top 100 advertisers have stopped promoting on the platform, per Media Matters. Since 2020, those 50 companies have spent $2 billion on Twitter advertising. Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, and Meta are among those who have pulled their advertising budgets away from Twitter, according to Media Matters. The list of all 50 is available in Media Matters' report. Insider has reached out to all 50 companies for comment.

☆ I left my teaching job to go work at TikTok on Trust and Safety. It wasn't an obvious career move for someone without a coding background, but there are important jobs in Big Tech for non-technical pe
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( Charlotte Lytton | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Matt Soeth is an online safety consultant and former high school English teacher. He says you don't have to have a tech background to work in internet safety. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Matt Soeth, a 44-year-old online safety consultant based in California, about how to create a safer internet. Much of our work in trust and safety is about managing human behavior (good and bad) and the systems and tools behind that. But, knowing how online safety works, and speaking to systems of education and programs, are both ways to get ready for interviews and find roles.

☆ Elon Musk wanted to reinstate a right-wing satire account on day one as Twitter chief
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Azmi Haroun | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Elon Musk expressed interest in reinstating the Babylon Bee's twitter account hours after he took over. According to The Washington Post, Musk thought the right-wing satire site shouldn't have been banned. The Babylon Bee had called Biden health official Rachel Levine, who is a transgender woman, "Man of the Year." The site's account was reinstated on Sunday, three weeks after his takeover of Twitter. Weeks before Musk's purchase, ex-wife Talulah Riley texted Musk criticizing the platform's decision to ban The Babylon Bee and calling for him to reverse the decision and make the platform "radically free speech."

☆ Elon Musk has upended Twitter’s business. Here’s how he could fix it
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

The Tesla CEO has previously said he “hates advertising” and, as Twitter’s owner, professed a desire to make the company more reliant on subscription revenue than advertising dollars. Twitter has always struggled to turn its outsized influence in media, politics, and culture into a highly successful advertising business. Twitter’s advertising business has long been smaller than that of rivals like Facebook, in part because it didn’t offer the same level of user targeting. To successfully overhaul Twitter into a thriving subscription business would be to buck the trend of many other media properties that have struggled with the model. Twitter’s ad woesWhether he likes advertising or not, the business made up 90% of Twitter’s revenue prior to Musk’s takeover and replacing it won’t be an immediate shift.

☆ Mark Cuban says he's cautiously optimistic about Elon Musk making Twitter a safe and sustainable platform
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Kate Duffy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Mark Cuban said he was "cautiously optimistic" about Elon Musk making Twitter safe for users. Cuban said Twitter's biggest challenge was making Twitter users feel safe on the platform. Elon Musk is smart and been here before. I'm cautiously optimistic he figures it out and the platform is safe and sustainable," Cuban said. Other staff from Twitter's privacy and security unit have also left, including its chief information security officer, its chief privacy officer, and its chief compliance officer.

Slightly over 15 million Twitter users voted in the poll with 51.8% voting in favor of reinstatement. Trump will be reinstated," Musk tweeted. Some users initially reported being unable to follow the reinstated account on Saturday evening. He also said Twitter would not reinstate any banned users until there was a "clear process for doing so." He has used Truth Social to promote his allies, criticize opponents and defend his reputation amid legal scrutiny from state, congressional and federal investigators.

Slightly over 15 million Twitter users voted in the poll with 51.8% voting in favor of reinstatement. But Trump also said Twitter suffered from bots, fake accounts and that the problems it faced were "incredible". He also said Twitter would not reinstate any banned users until there was a "clear process for doing so." Truth Social has been Trump’s main source of direct communication with his followers since he began posting on the app regularly in May. He has used Truth Social to promote his allies, criticize opponents and defend his reputation amid legal scrutiny from state, congressional and federal investigators.

CNN —Former US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account has been reinstated on the platform. The account, which Twitter banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, was restored after Twitter CEO and new owner Elon Musk posted a poll on Twitter on Friday night asking the platform’s users if Trump should be reinstated. Asked on Saturday what he thought of Musk purchasing Twitter and his own future on the platform, Trump praised Musk but questioned whether the site would survive its current crises. It may make it, it may not make it.”Still, Trump said he liked Musk and “liked that he bought (Twitter. Soon after Trump’s Twitter ban, he was also restricted from Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, which could also restore his accounts as soon as January 2023.

☆ Twitter is actually safer since Elon Musk took control, claims former safety chief Yoel Roth
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-19 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The former head of safety and trust said Twitter is actually safer under Elon Musk. Yoel Roth wrote an op ed for The New York Times explaining the reasons for his departure. "A Twitter whose policies are defined by edict has little need for a trust and safety function." However, Roth commented that even as Musk "criticizes the capriciousness of platform policies, he perpetuates the same lack of legitimacy through his impulsive changes and tweet-length pronouncements about Twitter's rules. In appointing himself 'chief twit,' Mr. Musk has made clear that at the end of the day, he'll be the one calling the shots."

☆ Elon Musk says no decision yet on Trump's Twitter ban as he reinstates others
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( David Ingram | David Ingram Covers Tech For Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said Friday he was bringing back three high-profile accounts that had been suspended for breaking the service's rules, but he said he hadn't made a decision about former President Donald Trump's account. "Trump decision has not yet been made," Musk said in a tweet, as Twitter users braced for sweeping changes on the service that Musk bought three weeks ago. It may be only a matter of time before Musk reinstates Trump. Twitter permanently suspended Trump's account in January 2021, citing his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and the potential for more violence. It was not clear if Musk had made any changes to Twitter's policies that ban hate speech and harassment.

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