Twitter’s former censor has been forced to flee the $1.1m Bay Area mansion he shares with his boyfriend after Elon Musk shared part of his thesis which suggested letting children access gay hook-up app Grindr.
Yoel Roth, 34, and his partner Nicholas Madsen, 44, moved out of their two-bed, two-bath property in El Cerrito over fears for their safety, the Washington Post reported.
The tweet said to have sparked the move saw Musk write: ‘Looks like Yoel is in favor of letting children being able to access adult internet services in his PhD thesis.’
He shared a screenshot of part of said document.
Roth’s thesis, written in 2016 while at the University of Pennsylvania, saw him claim that many under-18s access gay hook-up app Grindr, despite being too young to do so.
He then suggested that an age-appropriate version of the app be created, in order to offer support to LGBT youth.
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth and his family have since been forced from their home following a torrent of threats and harassment
Elon Musk falsely implied in tweets that Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, who is gay, has advocated for child sexualization
Musk baselessly implied in more than one tweet that Roth had a permissive view of pedophilia
During his time at Twitter, in his role of trust and safety, Roth had huge sway in decided which posts needed to be removed and accounts suspended.
He also gleefully joked about upcoming meetings with FBI officials in the recently-released Twitter files.
The former trust and safety manager has become emblematic of what free-speech fans say were the issues with Twitter censoring posts which went against prevailing liberal orthodoxy.
News of his apparent dealings with the FBI sparked claims the social media network was in bed with the federal government, with the initial tranche of files including requests from the Democrat party itself to remove unflattering tweets about Hunter Biden.
Snippets of his communications have been posted in recent days by conservative journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss as part of what Musk has termed the ‘Twitter Files’.
Following Musk’s tweets, his followers also directed harassment at the professors who reviewed the dissertation reports The Washington Post.
Roth was a longtime member of Twitter’s policy team and he was one of the few top executives to remain with the platform in the highly chaotic first weeks after Musk’s $44 billion takeover was approved, which saw around 75 per cent of Twitter staffers fired.
Musk’s claims against Roth come just a few weeks after Musk publicly defended Roth from accusations of left-wing bias based on some of his older tweets
Musk’s turning on Roth appear to have occurred relatively suddenly. Roth appeared in a call alongside Musk to reassure advertisers shortly after the takeover. As recently as late October Musk tweeted: ‘I want to be clear that I support Yoel. My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to out political beliefs.’
Yoel, similarly, was respectful towards Musk and even defended him after his departure from Twitter.
‘I think one of things that is tricky about Elon, in particular, is that people really want him to be the villain of the story, and they want him to be unequivocally wrong and bad, and everything he says is duplicitous. I have to say that wasn’t my experience with him.’
Yoel Roth, 34, seen left in both photos, together with his 44-year-old boyfriend Nicholas Madsen have been forced to leave their family home
On Monday night, Twitter also dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, a group of volunteers including civil rights leaders, advocates, and academics from around the world who had been advising the company on ways to reduce hate speech, child exploitation, and other problems on the social media platform.
The council had been scheduled to meet with Twitter representatives this evening but Twitter informed the group via email that it was disbanding it shortly before the meeting was to take place, according to multiple members.
The council members spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fears of retaliation. The email said Twitter was ‘reevaluating how best to bring external insights’ and the council is ‘not the best structure to do this.’
‘Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,’ said the email, which was signed ‘Twitter.’
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