NEW YORK (AP) — Elon Musk’s X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has named a new head of safety nine months after the last executive to hold the position departed from the social media company.
X announced that Kylie McRoberts, a long-time employee, will be in charge of the worldwide safety team. The platform also revealed that Yale Cohen, who previously worked for media firm Publicis Media, would take on the role of head of brand safety and advertiser solutions.
The previous executive in charge of what was previously referred to as the trust and safety team, Ella Irwin, left the company in June 2023. While Irwin did not provide specific reasons for her departure at the time, she resigned shortly after Musk publicly criticized the platform's handling of posts about transgender topics.
Since Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the platform in October 2022, X has experienced multiple changes in leadership.
The appointments, first announced Tuesday, come amidst ongoing worries about content moderation on X and the increase in misinformation and hate speech on the platform, which some researchers say has intensified under Musk's ownership.
The problem has led to the departure of some major advertisers. In November, companies such as IBM, NBCUniversal, and its parent company Comcast, declared that they had ceased advertising on X following a report from Media Matters, an advocacy group, which stated that their ads were appearing alongside content praising Nazis. This was another setback as X seeks to regain the support of major brands and their advertising funds, which are X’s primary source of income.
Later that month, Musk angrily responded to companies that had stopped spending on X in reaction to antisemitic and other hateful content, accusing them of “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially telling them to go away.
In addition to conflicts with advertisers, X has also tried to take legal action against those who have highlighted the spread of hate speech on the platform — including Media Matters and the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate. A federal judge dismissed the case against the center last week, ruling that X cannot pursue compensation for the independent actions of third parties based on the non-profit’s reports, or its “speech.”
