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A former executive at Amazon and Google, Irwin was responsible for content moderation at Twitter.
Ella Irwin, who first joined Twitter in June 2022, has reportedly resigned from her position.
She took over as head of trust and safety in November last year when Yoel Roth famously left the company as part of a mass exodus under Elon Musk’s leadership. Her Twitter bio no longer mentions her position at the company, and she reportedly confirmed her resignation to Reuters yesterday (2 June).
Irwin has previously held management positions at Twilio, Amazon and Google. During her stint at Twitter, she was responsible for content moderation on the platform. The company has received a lot of criticism for its content moderation practices in recent months.
It also comes as advertisers continue to leave the platform. In November last year, shortly after the infamous $44bn takeover, Twitter was labelled as “high risk” for those looking to buy ads on the platform.
Earlier this year, The Platformer reported that the company’s daily revenue was down 40pc year-over-year, while The Information said more than 500 of Twitter’s top advertisers had halted spending since Elon Musk bought it in October.
Irwin’s resignation comes just weeks after Musk announced a new CEO for Twitter, Linda Yaccarino. The former NBC Universal advertising chief is expected to “focus primarily on business operations”, while Musk concentrates on product design and new technology.
“Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app,” Musk tweeted.
Irwin’s move also comes amid greater regulatory scrutiny of Twitter’s content activities.
EU internal markets chief Thierry Breton tweeted earlier this week that Twitter has pulled out of the voluntary code of practice against disinformation; the bloc’s attempt to crack down on fake news content on the internet.
The EU executive noted that while the code of practice on discrimination is technically voluntary, fighting discrimination will be a legal obligation for major social media companies under the Digital Services Act expected to come into force on 25 August.
“You can run but you can’t hide,” he wrote. “Our teams will be ready for enforcement.”
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