“Twitter is less secure with Elon Musk,” warns former security official

Joel Roth, former head of reliability and safety of Twitter Inc, pointed out that the social networking platform is no more secure under new owner Elon Musk, warning in his first interview since resigning last month that Twitter no longer has enough staff for security-related tasks.

Roth had initially said in a post that by implementing certain measures, Twitter’s security had improved under the billionaire’s management.

In a question during an interview at a Knight Foundation event yesterday, regarding the if it still feels the same about Twitter’s security, Roth replied: “No.”

Tim Roth has been at Twitter for many years and helped the company’s management make a number of serious decisions, including the decision to permanently suspend the account of Twitter’s most famous user, former US President Donald Trump. This decision was made last year.

His departure further confused advertisers, several of whom have left Twitter after Musk moved to lay off 50% of staff including several involved in managing the content of posts.

Before Musk took over Twitter, about 2,200 people worldwide focused on managing the content of Twitter posts, according to Roth. He said he no longer knows the number of people involved in content management after the acquisition, as the relevant list has been deactivated.

Twitter under Musk began to diverge from the implementation of written, as well as publicly available, decision-making policies that have as a reference point the content of the posts and are taken unilaterally by Musk. Roth cited this practice as a reason for his decision to leave the company.

“One of the boundaries I set was where Twitter would submit to dictatorial decrees rather than implementing policies … there is no longer a need for me in my role to do what I did,” he said. .

The return of the Twitter Blue premium subscription, which will allow users to pay to verify their account usage identity, was triggered despite warnings and advice from the security and reliability team, Roth said.

The activation of the mentioned service was immediately besieged by holders of fictitious profiles with fictitious accounts of major companies such as Eli Lilly, Nestle and Lockheed Martin.

Roth said yesterday that he made a mistake by restricting the publication of a New York Post article that contained comments about the son of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden shortly before the 2020 presidential election.

However, he defended Twitter’s decision to permanently disable Trump’s account under threat of violence following the dramatic invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“We’ve seen the clearest possible example of what evolution will look like when things are turned off the internet,” Roth said. “We saw people dead in the Capitol.”

Musk tweeted on November 19 that Trump’s account would be reinstated, following a small majority’s positive opinion in a surprising Twitter poll.

RES-EMP

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