A vicious online storm forced Yoel Roth and his family to flee their home.
 | By Suein Hwang Business, Economics and Technology Editor, Opinion |
You may not remember Yoel Roth's name. But you may remember some of his recent turbulent personal history: his role as a Twitter executive in the decision to suspend Donald Trump's account on the site after the Jan. 6 riot, Trump's attack on him and the subsequent social-media backlash he faced. A year and a half later, Roth quit his Twitter job and spoke publicly about the platform's new owner, Elon Musk; Musk's vicious response and the resulting online storm forced Roth and his family to flee their home. |
Roth doesn't relish revisiting what happened to him, but he is doing so in a Times Opinion guest essay today because he believes those attacks were part of a strategy that is giving the right greater sway over what you see online. |
Academic studies may have disproved the notion that Silicon Valley platforms favor liberal causes. But neutrality isn't the goal in our polarized times. Targeting workers at social-media companies and researchers at academic institutions is a way to pit employers' need to protect their staff against greater but more abstract concerns about fairness or even our democracy. Right now, Roth believes this strategy by the right to intimidate these employers is succeeding. |
In the essay, he details for the first time the way Trump's attack on him led to a greater reluctance by Twitter (now known as X) to quell right-leaning misinformation and abuse, how India influenced the platform by targeting local employees, and how Musk's decision to release internal company documents led to the harassment of other rank-and-file employees. Roth goes on to describe how such campaigns have also come for academia, making even some of the best-funded universities reconsider their efforts to understand and address the spread of misinformation. |
"Platforms had finally begun taking these risks seriously only after the 2016 elections in the United States," Roth writes. "Now, faced with the prospect of disproportionate attacks on their employees, companies seem increasingly reluctant to make controversial decisions, letting misinformation and abuse fester in order to avoid provoking public retaliation." |
As this dynamic is playing out, more than 40 national elections are scheduled to take place around the world in 2024, including one happening here in America. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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