SAN FRANCISCO: Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety told Reuters on Thursday that she has resigned from the social media company.
The company faced criticism for lax protections against harmful content since billionaire Elon Musk acquired it in October. Irwin had joined Twitter in June 2022 and took over as head of the trust and safety team in November last year when previous head Yoel Roth resigned. She oversaw content moderation.
An email to Twitter returned an automated reply with a poop emoji. Irwin declined further comment, and Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Irwin’s departure comes as the platform has struggled to retain advertisers, with brands wary of appearing next to unsuitable content.
Musk announced earlier this month that he hired Linda Yaccarino, the ex-NBCUniversal advertising chief, to become Twitter’s new CEO.
Fortune earlier reported that Irwin’s internal Slack account appeared to have been deactivated.
Since Musk’s acquisition, Twitter has cut costs dramatically and laid off thousands of employees, including several who had worked on efforts to prevent harmful and illegal content, protect election integrity, and surface accurate information on the site.
Musk promoted a feature called Community Notes, which lets users add context to tweets as a way to combat misleading information on Twitter.
The company is facing increasing scrutiny from regulators over its moderation efforts. Twitter withdrew from a voluntary agreement with the European Union (EU) to tackle disinformation while saying it was committed to complying with upcoming internet rules in the EU.
Twitter continues to be committed to fully complying with the Digital Services Act and addresses the risks of disinformation within the DSA framework in a manner that reflects Twitter’s unique service and protects user rights and safety, as we follow the objective of becoming the… pic.twitter.com/MSJk5mhkdH
— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) May 29, 2023
