Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter entered its third week and after massive layoffs, amid an exodus of top privacy and security executives, the billionaire exposed a fragile financial future for the social media platform.
Yoel Roth, the head of security and integrity who was deputized to publicly address advertisers and users about the platform, is reportedly the latest to leave the company.
According to multiple reports, the departures began on the same day Elon Musk addressed employees for the first time, saying “there is no question of bankruptcy”.
The day began with the resignation of three top security executives – Chief Information Security Officer Lee Kissner, Chief Privacy Officer Damian Kieran and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty – following warnings from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). (Twitter settled with the FTC over privacy issues in May.) Following those departures, Roth and Robin Wheeler, Twitter’s head of customer solutions, also left the company.
In an email, Musk described the company’s dire economic conditions and how important he believed its subscription service, Twitter Blue, was to its future.
Without significant subscription revenue, there’s a good chance Twitter won’t survive the upcoming economic downturn. We need about half of our revenue for subscriptions, Musk said in the email.
One employee also said at the staff meeting that Musk appeared to downplay employees’ concerns about how a weak Twitter workforce was handling its obligations to uphold privacy and data security standards.
Musk’s memo and staff meeting echoed a livestreamed conversation on Wednesday in which he sought to address the concerns of major advertisers and made his most detailed public comments about Twitter’s directive as it seeks to buy the platform late last month. Were. had agreed to. had agreed to. had signed a $44 billion deal for and rejected its top. Officer.
The departure adds to issues that have plagued the social media platform ever since it was bought by Musk. Musk’s acquisition and confusing back-and-forth over product launches and content moderation policies have prompted several brands including General Mills to buy ads on Twitter as the billionaire seeks to improve live streams for advertisers. Both Roth and Wheeler, who used to lead the live streams, have now left the company.
Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, tweeted, so Elon brought the two men forward to talk to advertisers to persuade them to continue partnering with the company. Companies that stay with Twitter at this point will be bound by these dangerous and unnecessary policy changes.