Former Twitter censorship commissar complains Twitter Files endanger censors

Ex-Twitter executive Yoel Roth Friday complained that Elon Musk’s release of The Twitter Files is putting those involved in operating Twitter’s massive censorship machine in “harm’s way”. 

The Twitter Files are a tranche of internal Twitter communications showing a censorship enterprise run by Twitter leadership and the Democratic Party. They were released by Elon Musk on Friday. 

Roth, who until last month was Twitter’s Head of Site Safety and Integrity was one of the main executives responsible for removing content and users that did not conform to a strict Democratic Party narrative, including the government’s COVID-19 messaging. Roth is known for publicly calling Trump and his allies “actual Nazis” and mocking Trump supporters. In a now-deleted tweet, Roth wrote, "we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.” 

When the Biden administration was trying to establish its Disinformation Governance Board, otherwise referred to as the Ministry of Truth, Roth was one of two Twitter executives handpicked by the White House to enforce the administration’s censorship of unapproved speech. 

Roth is also responsible for labeling unapproved posts as “misleading”. 

Now, Roth is worried that exposing Twitter employees for censoring free speech is putting them in danger. 

“Publicly posting the names and identities of front-line employees involved in content moderation puts them in harm’s way and is a fundamentally unacceptable thing to do,” Roth posted on Mastodon. 

But Roth was one of the executives who allowed the publication of the private identities of his political opponents such as Chaya Raichik, who operates the popular account Libs of TikTok. Though Raichik had been concealing her identity for safety reasons, Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz published Raichik’s name and personal details in an article which she posted to Twitter. Despite the article violating Twitter’s doxxing policy, it was allowed to remain on the platform. 

Roth also permitted the publication of the private identities of individuals who donated to the Freedom Convoy, a caravan of truckers who led a mass protest in February against Canada’s harsh COVID-19 restrictions.  

After the convoy and the C$10 million they had raised were suspended from GoFundMe, they moved to conservative fundraising site GiveSendGo. A Left-wing hacker named Aubrey Cottle hacked the site and obtained a list of all the individuals who donated to the anti-mandate cause. Journalist Dean Blundell then published the list to his Twitter account and his 75.5K followers. The list included donors’ first and last names, zip codes and email addresses.  

"Trudeau is calling a State of Emergency to give the people their f*cking city back tomorrow and I think you might see some guy’s heads get freedom from their shoulders,” wrote Blundell. “Oh, and expect the organizers to be in major-league trouble.  The kind that you don’t get to litigate. Fighting objective reality is going to get weird tomorrow." 

The Freedom Convoy donors were subsequently harassed by online users and media – some lost their jobs – but Roth did not intervene.