Elon Musk
© The Sunday TimesTwitter CEO Elon Musk
On Thursday, three members of Twitter's Trusty & Safety Council quit the company in a huff, claiming in a tweeted screed that the "safety and wellbeing of Twitter's users are on the decline" since Elon Musk took over.

The individuals in question - Anne Collier, Eirliani Abdul Rahman, and Lesley Podesta (niece of John Podesta) - wrote about how they've worked tirelessly on 'digital safety' - with Rahman proudly serving on the Council's "Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) Prevention advisory group."

Except - these three beacons of virtue apparently didn't do much when it came to pedophiles running rampant on the platform - which led several major brands to pull campaigns with the company shortly before Musk's acquisition.

"You all belong in jail," tweeted commentator Mike Cernovich, linking to a New York Post article outlining how Twitter refused to remove child porn because it "didn't find a violation."

To which Elon Musk replied: "It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!"


Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded to Musk, saying "This is false," to which Cernovich replied "How did this slip through?" - linking to yet another example of Twitter's failures, in which a judge ruled the company could be sued for failing to take down child porn videos.



"Yoel et all were very focused on censorship of viewpoints they don't agree with," Cernovich continued, referring to Twitter's former head of "Trust and Safety," Yoel Roth. "Is there a way to internally audit how "safety team" people spent their time?"


Roth notably wrote his PhD dissertation on the gay sex app Grindr, in which he downplayed safety concerns about minors being exposed to sexual content online.
And part of his dissertation (called "Gay Data"). pic.twitter.com/cpr34EqIhO

— faayete (@faayete) November 20, 2022
[Ed. note: @faayete has since protected their account. Roth himself also appears to have deleted the referenced tweet]

After Roth left, Musk began cleaning up child pornography on the platform.



In September, Twitter's lack of action against child porn caused major brands - including Dyson, Mazda, Forbes and PBS Kids - to suspended their marketing campaigns or remove ads from 'parts of Twitter' because their promotions were featured next to tweets soliciting child pornography, Reuters reported at the time.
DIRECTV and Thoughtworks also told Reuters late on Wednesday they have paused their advertising on Twitter.

Brands ranging from Walt Disney Co, NBCUniversal and Coca-Cola Co to a children's hospital were among more than 30 advertisers that appeared on the profile pages of Twitter accounts peddling links to the exploitative material, according to a Reuters review of accounts identified in new research about child sex abuse online from cybersecurity group Ghost Data. -Reuters
Easily filtered keywords including "rape" and "teens" were featured alongside promoted tweets from corporate advertisers, a Reuters review found.

In one case, a Cole Haan ad appeared next to a tweet in which a user solicited "trading teen/child" content.

"We're horrified," said Cole Haan brand president, David Maddocks. "Either Twitter is going to fix this, or we'll fix it by any means we can, which includes not buying Twitter ads."
In another example, a user tweeted searching for content of "Yung girls ONLY, NO Boys," which was immediately followed by a promoted tweet for Texas-based Scottish Rite Children's Hospital. Scottish Rite did not return multiple requests for comment. -Reuters
Twitter offered a boilerplate response, telling Reuters that the company "has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation," and is investing more resources dedicated to child safety, adding that the company is working closely with advertisers and partners to investigate and avoid embarrassing corporate clients in the future.

Twitter's child porn issues were noted by The Verge in late August, causing pushback from advertisers that are critical to the company's revenue stream.

After Reuters presented Twitter with a sample of 20 accounts promoting child porn last Thursday, the company removed around 300 additional accounts from the network, but over 100 remained on the platform the following day, according to Ghost Data and Reuters.

And while child porn ran rampant at Twitter, the well-connected Leslie Podesta was militant about vaccination and absolutely hated Donald Trump.


As ZeroHedge contributor Portfolio Armor wrote last month,
What Was Twitter's Staff Doing Before?

That Twitter has reportedly been able to crack down on child porn with its current skeleton staff (following Elon Musk's layoffs and the subsequent resignations) raises the question of what Twitter's thousands of employees , including its "Trust & Safety" department, were doing before. They might say they protected the world from Donald Trump using Twitter to incite violence. Except now that Elon Musk has reinstated Trump's account, everyone can see that Trump had used the platform to call for peace on January 6th, 2021.


It appears that, when they weren't deplatforming political opponents, most of Twitter's former employees weren't doing much productive at all. A few weeks ago, the once-deplatformed account @LibsofTiktok shared a TikTok video by a Twitter employee sharing her "day in the life" at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco. It started with her drinking an iced matcha tea on the house, and ended with her drinking free wine on the roof.


Speaking of child porn, did Paul Krugman ever get to the bottom of this?