Update: Ella Irwin alleged to Reuters she resigned from Twitter on June 1, 2023, inferring her departure may have occurred sometime prior to this date. According to NBC News, Irwin “served for roughly seven months and declined to provide a reason for her decision”.
Dear Reader,
I’ve just been caught up amongst the waves of suspensions of journalists on Twitter, no doubt due to my tweets and blog posts which are endlessly critical of Elon Musk and the massive mess he’s intentionally made of our discourse.
I logged into Twitter to find that I was asked to delete two tweets which showed up simply as two empty boxes.
After clicking “Delete” on these non-existent tweets, I was overjoyed to discover that Trust & Safety VP (and Elon Musk lapdog) Ella Irwin banned me from Twitter for 7 days. I'm not sure how I broke the rules.
Who is Ella Irwin?
Irwin was hired as a product management leader (VP of Product for Health and Twitter Service) several months after Elon announced he was buying Twitter, then was promoted to replace Yoel Roth once he was let go.
Does anyone else think it is interesting that Ella speaks Russian? I wonder if she’s telling us about her Duolingo streak here, or something else entirely.

Interestingly, Irwin’s previous roles at other companies were focused on Trust & Safety/Abuse/Risk Management, yet she was hired at Twitter for a completely different type of product leadership role. It’s a departure.
Could one reasonably assume Irwin was hired to eventually work on other things a bit closer to her skillset?
Indeed, if I were Irwin, the only way I would take such a career deviation is if I had been promised Yoel Roth’s role from the moment she was hired.
The text message exhibits in the Twitter v. Musk lawsuit were revelatory. A redacted individual sent Musk the following messages:
“It will be a delicate game of letting right-wingers back on Twitter and how to navigate that (especially the boss himself, if you’re up for that) I would also lay out the standards early but have someone who has a savvy cultural/political view to be the VP of actual enforcement
A Blake Masters type”
If you aren’t familiar with Blake Masters, here’s what Vanity Fair had to say in August:
He has claimed that "Black people" are to blame for America's "gun violence problem"; praised the writings of Ted Kaczynski, a domestic terrorist who has become a cult hero among the young and very online portion of the far right; and embraced the rhetoric of "the great replacement," a theory championed by white nationalists who accuse Democrats of replacing white Americans via an "invasion" of immigrants from non-white countries. Among the influential white-extremist figures who have taken a liking to Masters is Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer blog.
Andrew Anglin, in case you are unaware, was recently allowed back onto Twitter by Elon Musk (and his henchwoman, Ella Irwin):
Anyway, here is what a former colleague had to say about Irwin:
“She’s mostly just good at getting rewarded for other people’s work”
“General consensus by those of us who worked with her at the other place seems to be that she and Elon deserve each other.”
Despite all this, I am still surprised to see that Irwin, instead of doing her job of protecting users, is actively turning internal Infosec/Trust & Safety tools against users and their DM speech in an anti-competitive action sure to elicit special attention from the FTC and EU regulatory bodies:

While Twitter has been converted into a daily shitshow and Ella Irwin reimagines our public square full of Nazis, Musk cavorts with bone saw enthusiast Jared Kushner at the World Cup in Qatar.
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