Executive who covered up Twitter fraud remains employed by Elon Musk
Twitter’s Head of Site Safety and Integrity Yoel Roth will remain employed by Musk-owned Twitter for the foreseeable future, despite Roth having covered up Twitter’s fraudulent claims about the number of fake accounts on the platform.
After announcing a bid to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April, billionaire Elon Musk attempted to pull out of the deal, accusing Twitter of falsely claiming that less than 5% of its accounts are fake, or “bots”.
Twitter’s misrepresentation of the number of authentic accounts on the platform has serious implications including defrauding advertisers. Another is that Twitter’s valuation is less than claimed, which is why Musk originally scuttled the deal, prompting a court battle.
Indeed, analyses suggest that Musk was correct. One report from Newsweek found that nearly half of Joe Biden’s followers are fake accounts. Another report by a former CIA and FBI cyber security analyst found that as many as 8 out of 10 Twitter accounts are bots.
Furthermore, a whistleblower complaint by Twitter’s former Head of Security Peiter “Mudge” Zatko published in August alleged that “Musk is correct: Twitter executives have little or no personal incentive to accurately ‘detect’ or measure the prevalence of spam bots.” When Mudge asked Head of Site Safety and Integrity Yoel Roth what percentage of Twitter accounts were fake, Roth replied, “We don’t really know.”
Now, Elon Musk has tweeted a screenshot of an internal message from Roth admitting that Twitter and its lawyers covered up the fraud.
“But also lol if Amir continues to BS me my escalation route is ‘Amir’s [objectives and key results] are entirely based on fraudulent metrics and he doesn’t care and may be actively trying to hide the ball,” wrote Roth.
“Literally doing what Elon is accusing us of doing,” he added.
“Wachtell & Twitter board deliberately hid this evidence from the court,” Musk tweeted along with a screenshot of the messages. “Stay tuned, more to come …”
Roth, who is known for his hostility towards President Trump, censored the New York Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden story during the 2020 presidential election.
“Yes, that person in the pink hat is clearly a bigger threat to your brand of feminism than ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE,” Roth tweeted in 2017, referring to Trump and his team.
In a now-deleted tweet, Roth also mocked Trump supporters, saying "we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.”
The executive also referred to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, (R-KY) as a "personality-free bag of farts."
When the Biden administration was trying to establish its Disinformation Governance Board, otherwise referred to as the Ministry of Truth, Roth was one of two Twitter executives handpicked by the White House to enforce the administration’s censorship of unapproved speech.
Roth is also responsible for labeling unapproved posts as “misleading”.
Still, Roth does not appear to be going anywhere anytime soon, talking about “the days to come”.
“We’ve taken action to ban the users involved in this trolling campaign — and are going to continue working to address this in the days to come to make Twitter safe and welcoming for everyone,” Roth tweeted Sunday.
