Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and newly anointed “Chief Twit” Elon Musk publicly clashed over the company’s handling of child exploitation cases Friday.
Musk excoriated the social media giant he took over back in October, claiming the company “refused to take action on child exploitation for years,” drawing a rare interjection into the latest Twitter drama from Dorsey, who replied, “This is false.”
TWITTER FILES: DONALD TRUMP’S REMOVAL FROM PLATFORM EXPLAINED IN LATEST RELEASE
The exchange came in a thread in which conservative influencer Mike Cernovich posted a 2021 New York Post article detailing a lawsuit that alleged Twitter declined to take down videos of a sex trafficking victim after concluding it didn’t violate the company’s policies. The company insisted in the article that it had a “zero-tolerance” policy for such activity.
“No, it’s not,” Musk then rebutted. “When Ella Irwin, who now runs Trust & Safety, joined Twitter earlier this year, almost no one was working on child safety. She raised this with Ned & Parag, but they rejected her staffing request. I made it top priority immediately,” he added, referring to former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal.
No, it is not.
When Ella Irwin, who now runs Trust & Safety, joined Twitter earlier this year, almost no one was working on child safety.
She raised this with Ned & Parag, but they rejected her staffing request.
I made it top priority immediately.@ellagirwin
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
“I don’t know what happened in past year. But to say we didn’t take action for years isn’t true. You can make all my emails public to verify. Company took away my access to email or I would,” Dorsey shot back.
Dorsey stepped down as Twitter CEO in November 2021. Text messages that surfaced in court battles over Musk’s acquisition of Twitter revealed that Dorsey privately cheered Musk’s purchase of the company, stressing he “couldn’t be happier you’re doing this.”
In March, before the acquisition, Dorsey lamented the state of affairs at the company, suggesting that “a new platform is needed” and that it shouldn’t be a public company in texts to Musk, who stewed over what he perceived as Twitter’s encroachment on free speech.
Since Musk’s $44 billion took effect in late October, the billionaire tycoon has upended the company, slashing jobs at a fervent clip, freeing accounts from Twitter jail, and releasing the “Twitter Files,” which detail internal company deliberations on content moderation — something Musk has lambasted for harboring too much liberal bias.
Dorsey has been mostly quiet, particularly refraining from opining on the contentious debate surrounding content moderation. But recently, he nudged Musk to “make everything public” instead of the drip-drop release from journalist Matt Taibbi.
If the goal is transparency to build trust, why not just release everything without filter and let people judge for themselves? Including all discussions around current and future actions? Make everything public now. #TwitterFiles
— jack (@jack) December 7, 2022
“If the goal is transparency to build trust, why not just release everything without filter and let people judge for themselves? Including all discussions around current and future actions? Make everything public now,” Dorsey tweeted last week amid the first batch of the Twitter Files.
“Most important data was hidden (from you too) and some may have been deleted, but everything we find will be released,” Musk replied at the time.
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In the latest document dump, Taibbi explored internal company deliberations to boot former President Donald Trump from the platform in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
