Twitter's head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, has resigned, marking yet another loss from the social media company’s dwindling content-moderation team.
Irwin joined Twitter last June and became head of the trust and safety team in November, when the previous head Yoel Roth resigned.
Since filling the role, Irwin has overseen content moderation, an operation that has drawn widespread criticism from watchdogs, advertisers, and users since Elon Musk's takeover last fall.
The resignation may be related to the Daily Wire's claim that Twitter “canceled a deal” for the website to make its free documentary “What is a Woman,” a film about gender and transgender issues, which Musk believes is appropriate to air on the platform.
“This was a mistake by many people at Twitter,” Musk tweeted back at Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing. “It is definitely allowed.”
“We posted two clips flagged by Twitter and they were indeed labeled ‘hateful conduct’ and the share functions were disabled,” tweeted Boreing, adding that he and the Daily Wire hope Twitter remains a place where people can “debate public policy and philosophy.”
“While it's not clear that the Irwin situation is connected, she likely would have been involved in the decision to label the video,” writes TechCrunch, “which is currently igniting a firestorm among conservative and anti-transgender Twitter users who see Musk as a reliable ally.”
Since beginning his reign as Twitter CEO, Musk has fired the majority of the platform’s content-moderation team, deciding that users should be in control of the responsibility via the Community Notes feature, which the company expanded to cover “misleading media” in images on Wednesday.
Last weekend, Twitter officially dropped out of the EU's Code of Practice, which was put in place to prevent major online platforms from profiteering from disinformation and fake news.