Twitter has reportedly lost a second safety and advertising executive in just 24 hours.
The company’s head of brand safety and ad quality, AJ Brown, has resigned — just a day after its head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, also stepped down, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Both departures come after a controversy on the platform over restrictions on the Daily Wire’s ‘What is a Woman?’ documentary, in which one of the right-wing outlet’s columnists, Matt Walsh, questions the transgender movement.
Irwin, who stepped down Thursday, was in charge of content moderation decisions.
It’s unclear if the exits had anything to do with Musk overriding a decision made by Twitter execs regarding the Daily Wire’s documentary.
Elon Musk’s Twitter has lost two top security and advertising executives in just 24 hours
The company’s head of brand safety and ad quality, AJ Brown, has resigned — just a day after the head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin (pictured), also quit
On Thursday, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing claimed that Twitter representatives told him the platform would “stop supporting us and limit the film’s reach and label it as “hateful conduct” due to “misgendering.”
Musk responded to several complaints about the censorship, saying it was an employee error and that the issue would be resolved on Friday. Indeed, Twitter users could share the documentary on Friday, as Musk himself did.
Irwin, who joined Twitter in June 2022, took over as head of the trust and security team in November when previous head Yoel Roth stepped down.
Kara Swisher, a tech journalist and frequent critic of Musk, called Irwin an “Elon loyalist” who was “kicked to the curb.”
Twitter suffered a huge loss in ad revenue following Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition last year.
Brown was the top executive who assured advertisers that they should trust Twitter to host their ad content.
In December, when Irwin took over from Roth, Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, the advisory group of about 100 independent civil, human rights, and other organizations the company created in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, address self-judgment. damage and other issues on the platform.
The council was scheduled to meet with Twitter representatives. But Twitter notified the group via email that it would disband the group shortly before the meeting was due to take place, several members said.
Linda Yaccarino, former head of advertising sales at NBCUniversal, was recently named Twitter’s new CEO, but hasn’t taken the job yet.
On May 12, Musk announced that Yaccarino will “focus primarily on business operations, while I will focus on product design and new technology.”
Twitter’s revenue comes primarily from advertising — in 2021 it accounted for 90 percent of revenue.
In January, the company suffered a 40 percent drop in revenue since 2022 as more than 500 advertisers paused their spending on the microblogging site.
A recent valuation by Fidelity of its stake in the social media giant showed that the company has lost value as their piece — $20 million in October — is now just $6.55 million.
In January, a Fidelity report indicated that the value plummeted, falling to $7.8 million after a huge fall in November.
Musk has repeatedly admitted that he overpaid for Twitter when he bought it for a whopping $44 billion in October.
In late March, Musk stated that he believed Twitter was worth “less than half” of what it cost him to buy it in the fall.
In a company-wide email, he said the social media giant had lost so much money since its initial purchase that it was valued at just $20 billion.