Musk, Yaccarino To Jointly Oversee X Trust and Safety

Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has reorganised the reporting structure of its trust and safety team, which will now report to both owner Elon Musk and chief executive Linda Yaccarino, the company said on Monday.

The firm’s product and engineering team is to report to Musk and Yaccarino will oversee all other departments, including human resources, legal, finance, sales and operations, X said.

In an email to staff on Monday Yaccarino said three X managers will oversee trust and safety responsibilities including law enforcement operations and threat disruptions.

Ella Irwin resigned as head of the team in June.

Content fracas

Yaccarino – who was formerly head of advertising at NBCUniversal – also said X is looking for a new head of brand safety and suitability.

The previous person filling the role, A.J. Brown, left the company in June after having worked on ways to prevent ads from appearing alongside unsuitable content.

The reshuffle comes as X continues to evolve under new owner Musk, who took over last October and has made continual changes including firing more than half of the company’s staff and discarding its established brand.

The firm has been criticised for a looser content moderation regime under Musk, who has called himself a “free speech absolutist”, even as the EU brings in new rules placing a stricter legal responsibility on large social media platforms to remove harmful content.

Accounts reinstated

X has defended its content moderation and said a new practice sees posts that violates its content rules being downgraded in search results so that most people don’t see them.

The company has also controversially reactivated accounts that had been suspended for posting inflammatory content.

The account of rapper Kanye West returned last week after an eight-month ban triggered by posts containing anti-Jewish material.