Twitter, once considered one of the world’s most powerful communication tools, is having the sort of week that makes you wonder if we were really, truly ready for it.
A recent takeover by eccentric billionaire Elon Musk has brought some major changes to the platform, some of which were predictably controversial, and now there are a plethora of high level executives saying sayonara to the social media network.
Yoel Roth, who has overseen Twitter’s response to combat hate speech, misinformation and spam on the service, resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
In his Twitter profile on Thursday, Roth described himself as “Former Head of Trust & Safety” at the company.
Roth did not respond to requests for comment. Bloomberg and tech site Platformer reported his exit first.
Earlier on Thursday, Twitter’s Chief Information Security Officer Lea Kissner tweeted that she had quit.
Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty also resigned, according to an internal message posted to Twitter’s Slack messaging system on Thursday by an attorney on its privacy team and seen by Reuters.
The news comes just as Musk began suggesting that the enormous company may be on the verge of bankruptcy.
Twitter Inc’s new owner Elon Musk on Thursday raised the possibility of the social media platform going bankrupt, capping a chaotic day that included a warning from a U.S. privacy regulator and the exit of the company’s trust and safety leader.
The billionaire on his first mass call with employees said that he could not rule out bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported, two weeks after buying it for $44 billion – a deal that credit experts say has left Twitter’s finances in a precarious position.
Musk had previously courted controversy by allowing Twitter users to purchase a blue verification checkmark for $8 a month, which created an opportunity for deft trolls to masquerade as important figures and corporations, creating chaos and confusion for many users.
