Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, announced on Thursday that she has resigned from the social media platform.
Her departure came on the same day Twitter was criticized by The Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing over claims that Twitter backed out of a deal to premiere the documentary What Is a Woman? In confirming her departure to Reuters and Fortune, Irwin did not comment on whether her resignation was related to the movie.
Boreing wrote in a lengthy Twitter thread Thursday that the The Daily Wire project had reportedly run afoul of Twitter policy due to scenes that depicted “misgendering” and would be labeled as “hateful” if posted on the platform.
Twitter owner Elon Musk later responded to Boreing, writing that the decision to censor the documentary was “a mistake by many people at Twitter” and that the film was “definitely allowed.”
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“Whether or not you agree with using someone’s preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws,” Musk tweeted. “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.”
Despite Musk’s statement, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh reported on Thursday night that What Is a Woman? was still censored when it was posted. Walsh said that a warning label reading the documentary’s content “may violate Twitter’s rules against Hateful Conduct” was attached to the post by Twitter, which prevented it from being retweeted.
Musk soon weighed in again by saying the issue would be resolved before he posted a link to the documentary on his personal Twitter account.
It’s been a wild 24 hours. It began with Twitter labeling our film hate speech and completely suppressing it, and ends with all suppression lifted and Elon Musk himself tweeting out the film and urging people to watch it. A huge win.
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 2, 2023
Irwin took the position of overseeing Twitter’s content moderation policies in November following the resignation of the previous head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth. Soon after his departure, Roth wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in which he explained that he quit because Musk decided that his role as CEO meant he’d “be the one calling the shots.”
When Newsweek emailed Twitter for comment about Irwin’s departure, an automated reply containing only a poop emoji was received.
Since Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022, his time as owner has been polarizing. Along with laying off thousands of employees, he was criticized for charging a fee for blue check mark verifications. Musk has also been denounced by groups like the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) for allegedly allowed hate speech to propagate on the platform.
“Our society has benefited from decades of progress on tolerance, but Elon Musk is undoing those norms at an ever-accelerating rate, by allowing hate to prosper on the spaces he administers, all with the tacit approval of the advertisers who remain on his platform,” CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed said in a statement this week.
Musk has denied charges that hate speech on Twitter has grown since he took control of the company.
Last month, he announced the hiring of Linda Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal sales executive, to assume his role as CEO of Twitter. Variety reported that Yaccarino is expected to begin work at the company sometime in June.