Yoel Roth

About

Yoel Roth is the former head of Global Trust and Safety at Twitter who worked for the social media platform for seven years and gave input on many content moderation decisions that affected political developments around the world. Roth was a public face for Twitter's content moderation policies and stayed on with the company following its 2022 acquisition by Elon Musk, before he eventually quit a month later and published an editorial in the New York Times criticizing Musk. In early December 2022, amid the release of the Twitter Files, Musk and others posted tweets blaming Roth for various decisions and insinuating that he was complicit in the alleged sexual exploitation of minors despite no such evidence existing as of mid-December that year.

Career

Roth earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016, writing his dissertation on "Gay Data" and queer social networks online, particularly Grindr.^[3]

In 2015, Roth started working for Twitter, and by 2018 was appointed Head of Site Integrity. During his time as Director of Trust & Safety, he was involved in many crucial decisions at the social media company. He authored many public-facing statements for Twitter's blog explaining its content moderation policies.^[4] Roth would often announce public changes or policies via tweet (example seen below).

Today, we’re adding labels to Tweets that share links to Russian state-affiliated media websites and are taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter.

We’ll roll out these labels to other state-affiliated media outlets in the coming weeks. pic.twitter.com/57Dycmn8lx

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) February 28, 2022

Exit From Twitter

Following Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, in late October 2022, Roth stayed on at the company even as other top executives quit or were fired. According to Roth, Musk purportedly used Roth's continued presence at the company to convince advertisers to stay.^[9] As the senior and most publicly visible Twitter executive behind content moderation decisions, Roth also reportedly offered stability during the Musk transition.^[9]

But just over two weeks after the deal closed, Roth then left Twitter and published an opinion editorial in the New York Times^[2] explaining his decision, which read (in part):

But even as he [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 … it was for this reason that I chose to leave the company: A Twitter whose policies are defined by edict has little need for a trust and safety function dedicated to its principled development.

Criticisms From Elon Musk

About a month after Roth's departure in mid-November 2022, Elon Musk promoted the release of the Twitter Files, an investigative report that showed how Twitter worked with both political parties in the U.S. to coordinate its content moderation and tamp down on misinformation, among other interworkings of the platform. The Twitter Files purportedly indicated that Twitter had more lines of communication with Democrats, in part because of the personal networks and views of staff. Musk and others argued that the Twitter Files showed bias in the platform's content moderation policies.^[10]

Musk also tweeted on December 9th, 2022, that Twitter's content moderation team under Roth had "almost no one working on child safety."^[11]

On December 10th in reply to a user who had quoted an old tweet of Roth's (seen below),^[6] Musk shared screenshots of Roth's dissertation on Grindr and said, "Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis" (seen below).^[7] The original tweet received over 70,000 likes over three days while Musk's reply received almost 60,000 likes in the same timeframe.

Following the tweets on December 9th and 10th, many online also criticized Musk's posting, arguing that it purportedly put Roth in danger and spread misinformation about him. For example, on December 10th, Twitter user @Green_Footballs argued that, given increasing political violence in the United States, Musk was putting Roth's life in danger, and received over 5,000 likes in two days.^[8]

Online History

Roth maintains his own website, yoyoel, and has had a Twitter presence since May 2008.^[5]

External References