--- title: "Leaked Messages Seem to Show Elon Musk Using Twitter to Punish His Enemies" description: "According to a scathing new report, Twitter's new Head of Trust and Safety has been breaking Twitter's rules on the whims of Elon Musk and his many feuds." date: "2023-01-28" modified: "2023-01-28" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/elon-musk-twitter-leaked-messages-twitter" categories: - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "elon musk" - "platforms" - "social media" - "twitter" --- # Leaked Messages Seem to Show Elon Musk Using Twitter to Punish His Enemies ![According to a scathing new report, Twitter's new Head of Trust and Safety has been breaking Twitter's rules on the whims of Elon Musk and his many feuds.]() *SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 24: Tesla CEO Elon Musk leaves the Phillip Burton Federal Building on January 24, 2023 in San Francisco, California. Musk testified at a trial regarding a lawsuit that has investors suing Tesla and Musk over his August 2018 tweets saying he was taking Tesla private with funding that he had secured. The tweet was found to be false and cost shareholders billions of dollars when Tesla's stock price began to fluctuate wildly allegedly based on the tweet. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) \Image: Getty Images\* According to a [scathing new report from *Bloomberg*](), Trust and Safety over at Elon Musk-owned Twitter is, well, pretty untrustworthy. Internal company messages reviewed by *Bloomberg* reportedly show that in the wake of longtime Twitter Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth's resignation, Musk's new position appointee, Ellen Irwin, has spent her first few months on the job — which she arguably shouldn't really have in the first place — bending and breaking established safety guidelines as needed to help her boss pettily punish his enemies. Not exactly trust-instilling, nor indicative of a particularly bright future ahead for the app. "Nearly all the people who know how to build safety systems at Twitter have left the company," Laura Edelson, a computer scientist at New York University who studies online political communication, told *Bloomberg*, "and those who are still there appear to be unwilling or unable to tell their boss that the things he is asking them to do are dangerous or violate Twitter's legal commitments." According to the internal docs, Irwin had a hand in two high-profile — and widely decried as unjustified — user bans, the first being that of Jack Sweeney, the teen behind @ElonJet. Upon taking over the platform, Musk used the flight-tracking account as proof of his commitment to [free speech absolutism](). As such, a lot of eyebrows were raised when, just weeks later, both @ElonJet and Sweeney's personal account were [missing from the platform](). And that action, per the *Bloomberg* report, was done manually, accompanied by a note reading: "Suspension: direct request from Elon Musk." (*Bloomberg* also notes that before he was kicked offline, Sweeney himself had posted a screenshot "showing Irwin had sent a Slack message directing employees to restrict visibility" to @ElonJet.) *Bloomberg* also pointed to the company's sudden ban of several [prominent Musk-critical journalists](), a move that was met with a fair share of public scrutiny. They too were silenced manually, an order that was executed by "direction of Ella," according to a different screenshot. The *Bloomberg* report was expansive, alleging as well that Musk and Irwin have disbanded a Twitter committee dubbed the Global Escalations Team, a group that formerly had the power to overrule execs "based on existing policy" — basically, a measure built to encourage corporate checks and balances. (Irwin told *Bloomberg* that allegation is "not accurate at all.") Meanwhile, Twitter's domestic and international teams, including [content moderation and safety teams]() that work on topics as sensitive as child sexual exploitation, [are still in shambles](). Look, managing trust and safety for any social media platform, Twitter or otherwise, is a very difficult thing to do, perhaps now more than ever. These sites sit rather perilously at the core of both broader societal functioning, at the same time mediating our interpersonal and even interior lives. Considering the real weight that social media has on our personal and public worlds — not to mention the reality that a lawless internet is always bound to be a hell gutter of leashless bad actors — strict security guidelines are necessary, while simultaneously difficult to define and enforce due to varied international free speech laws. In other words, when it comes to social media trust and safety, nearly everything is gray area. Decisions are complex, and can't and shouldn't be made on whims — let alone on whims that serve only to settle a new and chaotic owner's personal feuds. It's not only ridiculous, but potentially quite damaging, to the site as well as its users. "Twitter's policies and practices in the trust and safety space were built around defending the rights of users around the world, especially the most vulnerable and marginalized communities," an unnamed former Twitter exec told *Bloomberg*. "Since the acquisition, the company's only actions have been to silence critics of Elon, to expose journalists and others to harm, and to violate basic ethical standards and privacy laws." **READ MORE:** *[Twitter's Trust and Safety Head Ditches Protocol for Musk Whims]()* \[*Bloomberg*\] **More on Musk bans:** [*Free Speech Champion Elon Musk Is Mass Suspending Twitter Accounts of Journalists Who Criticized Him*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()