Twitter’s former head of trust and safety has fled his home due to an escalation in threats resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him, a person familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday.Yoel Roth, who resigned from the social media company in November, has in recent weeks faced a storm of attacks and threats of violence following the release of the so-called “Twitter Files” — internal Twitter communications that new owner Musk has released through journalists including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.
Roth’s position involved him working on sensitive issues including the suspension of then-President Donald Trump’s account in 2021. On Monday, Weiss posted a series of screenshots purported to show internal Twitter documents where Roth and others discussed whether to ban Trump’s account, with some employees questioning if the former president’s tweets violated the platform’s policies.
While Musk had initially been publicly supportive of Roth, that soon changed after he left the company.
Roth has since been the subject of criticism and threats following the release of the Twitter Files. However, things took a dark turn over the weekend when Musk appeared to endorse a tweet that baselessly accused Roth of being sympathetic to pedophilia — a common trope used by conspiracy theorists to attack people online.
A person familiar with Roth’s situation told CNN threats made against the former Twitter employee escalated exponentially after Musk engaged in the pedophilia conspiracy theory.