X putting its ‘trust’ in hands of Musk, CEO

X owner Elon Musk and Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino will both oversee the trust and safety team at the company formerly known as Twitter, the social media concern said Monday.

X’s product and engineering team will report to Musk, while Yaccarino will oversee all other divisions, including human resources, legal, finance, sales and operations, X said.

The trust and safety team, which is responsible for content moderation, has been the focus of some criticism of the platform after Musk acquired the company last October. Researchers have accused X of relaxing content guard rails, leading to a spike in harmful posts. The company has said the majority of content views are of “healthy” posts.

In an email to X employees Monday, which was shared with Reuters, Yaccarino said the company is searching for a new leader for brand safety and suitability.

The previous head of brand safety, AJ Brown, who worked on efforts to prevent advertisements from appearing next to unsuitable content, left the company last month.

Yaccarino said in the email that three X leaders will oversee different responsibilities within trust and safety, including law enforcement operations and threat disruptions.

Separately, X threatened to sue the Center for Countering

Digital Hate over the nonprofit’s research into hate speech and content moderation.

“This is an unprecedented escalation by a social media company against independent researchers. Musk has just declared open war,” Imran Ahmed, the center’s founder and CEO, told the AP.