Yoel Roth, the former Twitter executive who played a key role in banning former US President Donald Trump from the platform, has reportedly been forced to flee from his house after threats mounted against him post the release of Twitter Files part 4 and Elon Musk criticising him online.
Roth was the former head of the social media giant’s trust & safety. In several internal company messages leaked on Twitter Files, Roth and some other employees were seen talking about whether or not to suspend Trump’s account.
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The Washington Post reported that Musk has publicly accused Roth of being involved in paedophilia without any concrete evidence to back his claim. Such accusations are often used by QAnon conspiracy theorists.
Musk’s accusations against Roth came as a surprise since he had earlier defended the former Twitter employee who had been called out for an alleged left-wing bias when he referred to the 45th President of the United States as a “racist tangerine.”
In October 2022, Musk had tweeted regarding Roth, “We’ve all made some questionable tweets, me more than most, but I want to be clear that I support Yoel. My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs”.
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Trump was banned from Twitter after he refused to concede the 2020 presidential elections despite the mandate favouring Joe Biden. This resulted in the January 6, 2021 Capitol Riots, which further prompted Twitter to ban Trump fearing “risk of further incitement of violence.”
Tweets that were posted from Roth’s personal account in 2016 and 2017 were later resurfaced by Trump supporters who claimed that Roth was biased against the latter.
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Twitter had then stood by Roth, and released a statement that said, “No one person at Twitter is responsible for our policies or enforcement actions, and it’s unfortunate to see individual employees targeted for company decisions.”