Twitter owner Elon Musk is going scorched-earth on the company’s former head of Trust & Safety, Yoel Roth. On Saturday, Musk responded to the resurfacing of this 2010 tweet from Roth linking to a Salon article asking if high school students can “meaningfully” consent to sex with their teachers.
Can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers? http://bit.ly/bbpH68
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 20, 2010
That the question even needs to be asked tells you a lot about the mindset of the man who, until recently, headed up Twitter’s Ministry of Truth — the same company that banned the use of the word “groomer” in July.
Musk replied with a bombshell quote from Roth’s Ph.D. thesis — which was focused on the gay hook-up platform Grindr.
Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis: pic.twitter.com/1NiBohjhMQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2022
Roth argued in the paper that Grindr should be “safely connecting queer young adults” — including minor children.
And this sicko was in charge of lording it over the rest of us in content management? https://t.co/pf2XXi420u
— Paula Bolyard (@pbolyard) December 10, 2022
Setting aside the fact that one can earn a Ph.D. in Grindr studies, Roth’s apparent obsession with gay hook-up culture (see his research page here) may explain why the Twitter censorship cabal banned the word “groomer” last summer.
In July, Lauren Alexander, Twitter’s health product communications lead, said in an email, “We are committed to combating abuse motivated by hatred, prejudice, or intolerance, particularly abuse that seeks to silence the voices of those who have been historically marginalized. For this reason, we prohibit behavior that targets individuals or groups with abuse based on their perceived membership in a protected category. Use of this term [groomer] is prohibited under our Hateful Conduct policy when it is used as a descriptor, in context of discussion of gender identity.”
Earlier this week, we learned that Libs of TikTok, a Twitter account that highlights videos of LGBTQ kooks and allies — many of them teachers bragging about grooming the children in their care — was repeatedly suspended from the platform, despite the fact that they hadn’t violated any rules. “The committee justified her suspensions internally by claiming her posts encouraged online harassment of ‘hospitals and medical providers’ by insinuating ‘that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming,’” independent journalist Bari Weiss tweeted in the second tranche of the Twitter Files expose.
Today the Twitterverse has been busy digging up other creepy tweets by Roth over the years, like this one admitting that he hates children:
I’m persistently freaked out by the youth-centric direction my research interests are headed in, given I, you know, hate children.
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) August 24, 2011
Do these resurfaced tweets help explain why Twitter has been so soft on child traffickers and predators over the years? A Twitter user named Eliza (@elizablea), who describes herself as a “Human Trafficking Survivor Advocate,” was the one who dug up Yoel’s tweet about teacher-student sex. She’s been calling out the platform’s refusal, under previous ownership, to crack down on child trafficking and exploitation:
Reminder: a 13 year old minor survivor begged Twitter to remove a video sexually exploiting him.
Twitter reviewed the content and said NO.
They had his government ID showing that he was a minor at the time.
The video had over 160k views. Over 2k retweets.
— Eliza (@elizableu) September 4, 2022
Twitter 2.0 discovered that previous Twitter was simply removing child sexual abuse material Tweets in many cases.
The entire account was allowed to stay up after they removed the individual tweet.
Read that 7 more times.
— Eliza (@elizableu) December 10, 2022
And there are more where that one came from.
Oh, and Eliza says she’s hoping to expose the client list of one of the world’s most accomplished groomers:
I’m working on it. Whistleblowers welcome. https://t.co/1UTKU1zUep
— Eliza (@elizableu) December 10, 2022
She’s been tag-teaming with Musk today to hammer Roth for not protecting children from predators:
I wonder why the child safety team had little to no resources before you purchased Twitter? https://t.co/UnyA7Ox6Hs
— Eliza (@elizableu) December 10, 2022
Twitter is both a social media company and a crime scene
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2022
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2022
Stay tuned: More Twitter Files drops are expected in the next few days.
Story cited here.
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