Gay Former Twitter Exec Flees Home as Musk Smears Him

Yoel Roth, who until recently was the head of trust and safety for Twitter, has reportedly fled his home in the face of threats following a smear campaign by the platform's new owner, Elon Musk.

Roth, "who resigned from the social media company in November, has in recent weeks faced a storm of attacks and threats of violence following the release of the so-called 'Twitter Files' – internal Twitter communications that new owner Musk has released through journalists including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss," CNN reported.

"However, things took a dark turn over the weekend when Musk appeared to endorse a tweet that accused Roth without evidence of being sympathetic to pedophilia – a common trope used by conspiracy theorists to attack people online."

"A person familiar with Roth's situation told CNN threats made against the former Twitter employee escalated exponentially after Musk engaged in the pedophilia conspiracy theory," the news outlet said.

Musk precipitously dissolved the trust and safety council on Dec. 12, shortly before a scheduled meeting of the group. But his critiques of Roth had been growing more strident of late, Insider noted.

"Embracing a technique often used by the QAnon conspiracy movement, Musk baselessly implied in more than one tweet that Roth had a permissive view of pedophilia," Insider noted.

Roth had tweeted critiques of one-term president Donald Trump, referring to him as a "racist tangerine," reports recalled. Musk had taken Roth's less than two months ago when he tweeted, "We've all made some questionable tweets, me more than most, but I want to be clear that I support Yoel."

Following his departure from the company last month, Roth, in an interview with Kara Swisher, "warned Musk's laissez-faire approach to content moderation, and his lack of a transparent process for making and enforcing platform policies, has made Twitter less safe, in part because there aren't enough staff remaining who understand that malicious actors are constantly trying to game the system in ways that automated algorithms don't know how to catch," CNN reported at the time.

Roth posted a link to the interview at Twitter on Dec. 1, commenting that "The headlines only scratch the surface of the conversation."

"I feel humiliated. Ashamed. Dirtied. Effectively, from day one, I was given a life sentence without parole," Unsworth testified.

In the current charged climate, in which right-wing polticians and pundits have taken to accusing drag artists, advocates for LGBTQ+ youth, and others of "grooming" children, such rhetoric is even more inflammatory and dangerous now than it was in 2018.

Some on Twitter pointed this out, expressing concern for Roth's safety.