Who is Ella Irwin? Twitter and Elon Musk’s transgender posts fiasco explained as platform’s head of trust and safety resigns after criticism
Ella Irwin, who was tasked with handling the safety of Twitter alongside content moderation, has recently exited the company. She revealed the same in a lineup of tweets posted on June 2, 2023, but she refused to comment on anything else about the resignation. She stated that people have been confused regarding her decision to leave the company and continued:
"I did resign but this has been a once in a lifetime experience and I'm so thankful to have worked with this amazing team of passionate, creative and hardworking people. Will be cheering you all and Twitter as you go!"
Ella resigned after Elon Musk criticized how transgender-related content was being handled on the social media platform. The criticism was linked to a documentary titled What is a Woman? and Musk's statements came after Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing complained that the platform removed posts related to the documentary, saying that a majority of them contained hate speech.
Ella Irwin had worked with Google and Amazon in the past
Detailed information about Ella Irwin's childhood is currently unavailable. However, she went to California Lutheran University in 1997 and obtained her Bachelor of Science and Business Management in 2000. She then pursued an MBA at Golden Gate University in 2005.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Ella started her career as a call center operations manager for Great Western Bank from 1996 to 1998. She joined JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 1998 and held the position of Vice President for the Loss Prevention Manager until 2004 and the Fraud Prevention Program until 2006.
Ella Irwin was the director for risk management at eHarmony from 2008 to 2011 and VP for business operations in eCommerce risk management at Verifi from 2011 to 2014. She was the director of global trust and policy for ad products at Google from 2014 to 2015.
Irwin joined Amazon in 2015, where she was the director and GM for Marketplace Abuse Product Management until 2020. Before joining Twitter in June 2022 as the VP of Product for Trust and Safety, she held the same position for Consumer Trust at Twilio Inc. from 2020 to 2022.
Elon Musk recommended everyone watch What is a Woman?
What is a Woman? was trending in the headlines after posts associated with it were removed from Twitter. Following this, Elon Musk posted a tweet with the documentary's video and wrote that all parents should watch it. This happened after Matt Walsh, the documentary's creator and a prominent right-wing political commentator, mentioned in a tweet on June 1, 2023, that the film was being flagged as hate speech. He added:
"It has been blacklisted from the trends list. It still has nearly 900 thousand views."
Musk said in response that the problem would be resolved by the next day, and when Jeremy Boreing also addressed the problem of the documentary being suppressed, Musk replied by saying that the video being limited was people's misconception and that it was being allowed without restrictions.
After the problem was resolved, Matt Walsh expressed gratitude towards Musk for recommending the documentary to everyone and wrote:
"It began with Twitter labeling our film hate speech and completely suppressing it, and ends with all suppression lifted and Elon Musk himself tweeting out the film and urging people to watch it. A huge win."
According to the movie's summary, Walsh emphasized the changing concepts of sex and gender in the digital world. It also places emphasis on the transgender rights movement, anti-transgender bigotry, and what it means to be a woman.
Meanwhile, it remains unknown if Ella Irwin's resignation had anything to do with the suppression of the documentary on Twitter.
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