Musk disclosed on Friday that the head of Twitter’s “trust and safety” team served as the company’s de facto CEO prior to his October acquisition of the social media site.
Musk was referring to Yoel Roth, a former Twitter employee.
He verified that Roth was Twitter’s “actual CEO” in response to a tweet by Mike Solana, who stated, it’s pretty clear at this point the ‘trust and safety’ team was effectively running the entire company.”
Absolutely! The real CEO was the head of “Trust & Safety”.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
Roth announced his departure from Twitter in November, criticizing Musk’s efforts to safeguard free speech on the network.
Last week, I made the decision to leave my role leading Trust & Safety at Twitter.
Today, I'm sharing a few thoughts about what comes next for the site. https://t.co/QPAQR6zpqU
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 18, 2022
Musk labeled Roth the biased “head of censorship” in a tweet made on Thursday, after the “Twitter Files” disclosed the inner workings of the company’s filtering tools.
Musk was referencing Roth’s politicized tweets that criticized the Trump administration as “actual Nazis in the White House.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
The Twitter Files revealed that under its previous management, the social media company censored users on a vast scale, establishing an extensive infrastructure to limit expression at the direction of the Democratic National Committee and other influential entities.
Jack Dorsey served as Twitter’s CEO until 2021, when he was succeeded by Parag Agrawal. Agrawal was terminated following Musk’s acquisition of the platform.
Musk stated in a Thursday tweet that Dorsey was not to responsible for Twitter’s censoring, arguing that Roth and others had stolen his power and made major choices without his agreement or knowledge.
“The inmates were running the asylum,” Musk said of Twitter’s administration. “Jack has a pure heart [in my opinion].”
Controversial decisions were often made without getting Jack’s approval and he was unaware of systemic bias. The inmates were running the asylum.
Jack has a pure heart imo.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
As the scope of the company’s filtering methods become public, Musk has pledged to implement transparency improvements at Twitter.