Twitter policy chief faces wave of harassment amid Musk criticism

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

While trying to shepherd the moderation team into a new era, the policy and legal head of the company is facing criticism from the new owner, as well as harassment from users. There are significant uncertainties about the future of Twitter under Musk, according to a team meeting reported yesterday by Politico.

The conservative journalist Saagar Enjeti criticized Gadde. Enjeti had linked to a screen shot of the story and claimed that she hadcensored the Hunter Biden laptop story. Musk had previously indicated that he would push for a lighter version of the social network, which could mean scaling back a decade of gradual change.

Dave Lee of the Financial Times said that Gadde faced racist and invective after Musk's response. Musk has drawn negative attention to other employees. He replied to Mike Cernovich's claim that the deputy general counsel of the social networking site, Jim Baker, was involved in fraud.

The merger agreement banned Musk from using the social network, and his engagement with both employees was oblique. Many people quickly dogpiled both of them because of his active social media presence.

According to The Washington Post, the threat of drawing Musk's online ire has caused concern internally, with employees reportedly asking in a Monday town hall meeting for assurance that they would be able to safely do their jobs if Musk targeted them.

Musk's new comments have not been responded to by Dorsey.

It is not clear how much harassment Gadde would have faced without Musk's involvement. She is a long-standing target of people who oppose the moderation policies of the social networking site.

The conflict's main lesson is that the design of the company can already be unpleasant for employees, and that Musk's changes might only make that worse. Musk has promoted his purchase of Twitter as an opportunity to foster a digital town square where most legal speech is not allowed. This apparently won't extend to automated accounts, a decision that could pose its own problems. Anti-harassment tools and stricter rules are a way to improve the user experience for its most active accounts. With months to go before the deal closes, the moderation team will need to change the rules to fit Musk's new direction for the site.