The ongoing controversy over Twitter’s censorship of The Daily Wire for alleged “misgendering” escalated on Thursday evening with the social media giant’s Head of Trust and Safety, Ella Irwin, resigning in the wake.
That’s most likely because she and her department are the ones who made the decision to label tweets by Matt Walsh as violating Twitter’s “hateful conduct” policies. The result was a warning label being placed on the posts along with sharing disabled. Those moves came after Jeremy Boreing, CEO of The Daily Wire, revealed Thursday morning that Twitter backed out of a deal to show What Is a Woman, the outlet’s popular documentary about the militant transgender movement.
SCOOP: The Slack account of Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, appears to be deactivated according to a screenshot viewed by Fortune.https://t.co/slLnZML1UU
— Kylie Robison (@kyliebytes) June 1, 2023
It’s not yet known whether Irwin was fired or whether she resigned of her own volition in response to the situation, but it appears Musk made a call that forced her ouster. He either told her that she had to change the policy in question (which was not supposed to exist) and she resigned in protest, or she was simply told to resign for what she allegedly did.
No matter the details, if Irwin was committed to the idea that the site should censor and throttle posts for “misgendering,” a laughably anti-scientific concept that demands people affirm mental illness, she needed to go, and Twitter is better off with her gone. Such a policy also makes no sense given one of the reasons Musk even bought Twitter was to stop the censorship of The Babylon Bee, which spent almost a year with its account suspended for “misgendering” under the old Twitter ownership.
But while Irwin’s resignation is a welcome development, the damage does not appear to have been undone. Twenty minutes into Thursday evening’s showing of What Is a Woman, the censorship regime hit again, closing comments on the stream and disallowing it from being shared.
Despite @elonmusk promising that the @realDailyWire film “What Is A Woman” by @MattWalshBlog wouldn’t be censored, it seems someone @Twitter staff chose to censor it anyways less than 20 minutes after it was posted. You can’t even comment. Whoever did this should be fired. pic.twitter.com/kAVuULhjkA
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 2, 2023
Musk then took to Twitter to respond by saying that an update was being pushed out that would fix the problem tomorrow. He also noted that The Daily Wire’s posts that contain alleged “misgendering” will be throttled and disconnected from any advertisers.
What’s the justification for not treating it like any other film or tweet that manages to offend people? Nothing in the film is false. If you watch it you’ll love it. It’s incredibly well received by non-political audiences which is why the woke folks want to censor it so badly.
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 2, 2023
This is a problem. I understand the decision to not allow Twitter advertising on the posts as the social media site is a business. You can’t put advertisements on things that they don’t want to be seen as representing or promoting.
On the other hand, why is it going to take a day to uncensor the posts? And why would they be throttled to the point of not being recommended in the normal algorithm, which recommends all sorts of controversial stuff on a daily basis? All this because The Daily Wire dared to acknowledge biological reality?
Musk has stepped into a mine field with this, and his actions are muddled at best. He’d do well to go all the way and rectify this situation fully. Anything short of that is just going to build distrust, and given Twitter’s recent success, I’d hate to see that happen.
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