Twitter's Trust and Safety Head Ditches Protocol for Musk Whims

Twitter’s Trust and Safety Head Ditches Protocol for Musk Whims

Ella Irwin is Musk’s most faithful supporter, even when his impulses buck convention

ByDavey Alba and Kurt Wagner
January 26, 2023 at 7:00 PM EST

On a day hundreds of Twitter Inc. employees were debating whether to resign, Ella Irwin showed up with a pep talk. Elon Musk had offered her a battlefield promotion to manage trust and safety, the division in charge of limiting harmful posts on the network.

It was half past noon on Nov. 17. Twitter employees had a little over an hour to decide whether to click “yes” on a form Musk had sent out, asking that they declare they were willing to do their jobs in “hardcore” mode, or quit. Irwin encouraged the team to stay and find a way to work with Musk, according to three people who attended the meeting at the San Francisco headquarters. Though his methods were unconventional, she said, employees needed to adjust and support how he wanted to lead the company.

Some of the staff had a major problem with her pitch: The way Musk wanted to lead was going directly against the policies and procedures Twitter had spent years refining, an effort to build trust with the public and turn around its reputation for exposing users to toxic experiences. Already, Musk’s antics had spooked major advertisers and led to online harassment for former Twitter executives. Much of the remaining trust and safety staff hoped primarily to change his mind or protect Twitter from him, according to people familiar with the matter — but not Irwin.

Irwin has become the chief executor of Musk’s whims, even when it goes against established protocols for social media content work that Twitter and its peers have refined for the past decade, according to more than a dozen current and former employees. Musk has rewarded Irwin’s loyalty, trusting her to explain Twitter’s moves to the public in tweets and news articles.

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