Ella Irwin and AJ Brown, two of Twitter’s trust and safety team members, resigned last week. Their leaving the company came amid Daily Wire’s documentary “What Is a Woman? sparked controversy after the micro-blogging platform rejected it.
Elon Musk-led Twitter allegedly had a deal with the right-wing Daily Wire to premiere its documentary – “What Is a Woman?” for free. However, after the film was released, the platform cited two instances of ‘misgendering’ to flag it for ‘hate speech’.
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Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing responded to the flag. He said that Twitter presentations told their organization that the micro-blogging website “would no longer provide us any support and would actually limit the reach of the film and label it as ‘hateful conduct’ because of ‘misgendering.’”
“Will Twitter make good on their threat to throttle it and label it ‘hateful conduct,’ or will Twitter live up to its great promise? We’ll all find out together,” Boreing wrote in a Twitter thread. “With Twitter’s recent commitments to free speech, we thought it would be the perfect place to distribute the film and drive the conversation forward on one of the most important topics of our day.”
Musk apologised and also suggested that Irwin’s resignation was related to the controversy.
“We’re updating the system tomorrow so that those who follow @realDailyWire will see this in their feed, but it won’t be recommended to non-followers (nor will any advertising be associated with it). Commenting & deliberate sharing will be allowed. Sensitive content just won’t be pushed to people unless they ask for it or a friend sends it to them,” the Tesla founder said in a tweet.
He added that the documentary does not break any rules.
“I should note that I do personally use someone’s preferred pronouns, just as I use someone’s preferred name, simply from the standpoint of good manners. However, for the same reason, I object to rude behavior, ostracism or threats of violence if the wrong pronoun or name is used.”
Irwin and Brown have not issued statements. The latter was the platform’s head of brand safety and ad quality. His LinkedIn reflects that he is no longer with the company as of June 2023.
Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, who said she’d resigned from the company on Thursday.
