In his first public interview since abruptly quitting Twitter, Yoel Roth, the company’s former head of trust and safety, said he believes the platform is less safe under Elon Musk. Speaking at an event hosted by the Knight Foundation, Roth responded “I don’t,” when asked if he still believed Twitter was safer since Musk’s takeover.

Roth’s comments are especially notable because he was one of the only top executives publicly discussing what was happening on Twitter in the chaotic days following Musk’s takeover. Roth, a longtime member of Twitter’s policy team, detailed the coordinated trolling campaign that caused a surge in racist slurs on the platform. Musk often highlighted his tweets and pointed to his explanations about what Twitter was doing to stop the racist attacks.

But Roth said that although he was initially optimistic, a breakdown in “procedural legitimacy” ultimately caused him to leave. He noted that Musk had stated he wanted to form a "moderation council” before making major policy decisions at Twitter, but Musk quickly showed he would rather make decisions on his own.

“He would say things that were consistent with establishing a moderation council, that were consistent with not making capricious, unilateral decisions, and I was optimistic on the basis of that,” Roth said. “My optimism ultimately faded.”

Roth also pointed to the botched rollout of Twitter Blue and paid verification, saying that his team had warned Musk ahead of time but he opted to ignore their concerns. “It went exactly off the rails in the way that we anticipated, and there weren't the safeguards that needed to be in place to address it upfront,” Roth said, referring to the surge in scams and impersonations that followed the initial rollout of Twitter Blue.

Roth’s comments come as Musk is gearing up to relaunch Twitter Blue verification later this week. In his latest comments, Musk has said there will be different colors of badges for businesses and individuals, and that there will be a manual authentication process of some kind.

While Roth said he doesn’t believe Twitter will have a “spectacular moment of failure” as some former employees haves peculated following mass layoffs and resignations at the company, he said users should pay close attention to whether key safety features, like blocking and muting, continue to function normally, as well as privacy-protecting features like protected tweets. “If protected tweets stop working, run, because it's a symptom that something is deeply wrong,” he said.

He also said that while Twitter may be able to improve its machine learning systems, the lack of veteran policy and safety employees at the company would hurt the platform.

“Are there enough people who understand the emergent malicious campaigns that happen on the service and understand it well enough to guide product strategy and policy direction,” he said. “I don't think that there are enough people left at the company who can do that work.”

Elon Musk has taken aim at Apple’s App Store policies amid claims that the company has “threatened to withhold” Twitter from its store. According to Musk, Apple “won’t tell us why” it has an issues with Twitter, but the threats have

In subsequent tweets, Musk railed against Apple’s 30 percent “tax” on in-app purchases, and claimed the App Store owner has “censored” other developers. He also said that Apple “has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter.” (Apple wouldn’t be the first major advertiser to do so in recent weeks.)

This wouldn’t be the first time Apple has taken issue with Twitter. In an op-ed recently published byThe New York Times, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, said that Apple’s App Store reviewers often flagged content on Twitter during its app review process.

“In my time at Twitter, representatives of the app stores regularly raised concerns about content available on our platform,” Roth wrote, saying that app reviewers had flagged instances of racial slurs and nudity on the service. “Even as they appear to be driven largely by manual checks and anecdotes, these review procedures have the power to derail company plans and trigger all-hands-on-deck crises for weeks or months at a time.”

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk didn’t specify if Apple is holding new updates to the service or threatening to remove the app from its store altogether. However, there are a number of recent issues that could have flagged Twitter for additional scrutiny.

On Sunday, The Guardianreported that Twitter had initially failed to pull “freshly uploaded” video of a 2019 terror attack at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, until government officials alerted the company to its existence. There has also been widespread concern from activists over the rise in hate speech and reinstatement of high-profile accounts who were banned for breaking Twitter’s hate speech policies. Musk also recently stated he planned to give “amnesty” to previously-banned accounts.

Apple has strict, if unevenly enforced, rules that govern the content that can appear in apps in its store. Parler, a “free speech” rival to Twitter, was removed from the App Store for months due to its lax content moderation rules (the app was reinstated after it rolled out an AI-based moderation system). In 2018, Tumblr banned adult content following a brief removal from the App Store.

More than seven years after the first Wall Street Journal story about problems with Theranos’ blood tests, its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was sentenced to over a decade in prison for defrauding the company’s investors. She had been found guilty on four counts of fraud during a months-long trial where her lawyers argued that she was an inexperienced entrepreneur who hadn’t intended to mislead anyone.

Holmes’ story is, by now, well known. She founded Theranos as a college dropout, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from high-profile investors and courting former high-ranking government officials for her board. Since then, the rapid rise and downfall of Holmes and Theranos has taken on a life of its own, with major podcasts, books and a recent Hulu miniseries.

But Holmes herself has been almost completely silent. Her trial, where she testified in her own defense, and her sentencing are the only times she has spoken publicly about what went wrong at Theranos and how she feels all these years later. Watch the video above for the full story.

Meta is taking new steps to lock down teens’ privacy settings. The company is making changes to the default privacy settings for teens’ Facebook accounts, and further limiting the ability of “suspicious” adults to message teens on Instagram and Facebook.

On Facebook, Meta says it will start automatically changing the default privacy settings on new accounts created by teens under 16. With the changes, the visibility of their friend list, tagged posts, and pages and accounts they follow will be automatically set to “more private settings.”

Notably, the new settings will only be automatically switched on for new accounts created by teens, though Meta says it will nudge existing teen accounts to adopt similar settings. The update follows a similar move from Instagram, which began making teen accounts private by default last year.

Meta is also making new changes meant to prevent “suspicious” adults from contacting teens. On Facebook, it will block these accounts from the site’s “people you may know” feature, and on Instagram it will test removing the message button from teens’ profiles. The company didn’t share exactly how it will determine who is “suspicious,” but said it would take into account factors like whether someone has been recently blocked or reported by a younger user.

Additionally, Meta said it’s working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) on a “global platform” to prevent the non-consensual sharing of intimate images of teens. According to Meta, the platform, which could launch by mid-December, will work similarly to a system designed to prevent the sharing of similar images from adults.

According to a Facebook spokesperson, the system will allow teens to generate a “private report” for images on their devices they don’t want shared. The platform, operated by NCMEC, would then create a unique hash of the image, which would go into a database so companies like Facebook can detect when matching images are shared on their platforms. The spokesperson added that the original image never leaves the teen’s device. 

Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO and founder of Theranos, has been sentenced to just over 11 years in prison for defrauding the investors of her blood testing startup. The sentence comes almost a year after Holmes was found guilty on four counts of fraud following a months-long trial.

Prosecutors had pushed for a 15-year sentence, while Holmes’ attorneys argued she should get no more than 18 months of house arrest. Her probation officer had recommended nine years, according to The New York Times.

Throughout the trial, Holmes’ lawyers tried to portray the Theranos founder as a young and inexperienced entrepreneur who hadn’t intended to deceive investors or the public. During her testimony, Holmes blamed many of Theranos’ problems on others at the company, including her former partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.

She also testified that Balwani was abusive during their romantic relationship, and that he had misled her about what was happening in Theranos’ lab. Balwani, who as COO also oversaw day-to-day operations of the company’s lab, was found guilty on 12 counts of fraud in a separate trial earlier this year. His sentencing is due in December.

Even at her sentencing, Holmes proved she still has influential allies to defend her. Several Silicon Valley investors, including early Theranos backer Tim Draper, wrote letters of support urging the judge for a lighter sentence. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker also wrote in her support, asking the judge for “a fair and just sentence.”

Developing...

Elon Musk is now facing a new crisis at Twitter as a wave of employees seemed to reject his ultimatum of an “extremely hardcore” Twitter 2.0 or leave the company. Hours after a deadline for workers to check “yes” on a Google form accepting “long hours at high intensity, it seems a large number of employees have rejected Musk’s vision.

Exactly how many employees opted for severance over remaining at Twitter isn’t yet clear. The New York Timesreported the number was in the “hundreds,” while other early reports suggest the number could be much higher. The departures come after Musk already cut 50 percent of Twitter’s jobs in mass layoffs.

On Twitter, dozens of Twitter employees who had survived the initial round of layoffs tweeted farewell messages. One employee tweeted a video of a group of workers inside Twitter’s office counting down to the 5pm ET deadline on Musk’s ultimatum. “We’re all about to get fired,” he said.

Others tweeted messages alluding to Musk’s policies. In his Wednesday morning message, Musk had said that “only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

As the deadline approached, Musk reportedly grew concerned about how many remaining employees could leave the company. In a new memo, he appeared to walk back some of his earlier comments banning all remote work, though he still said he would fire managers if remote workers on their teams weren’t performing.

But it seems the concession wasn’t enough for many at Twitter Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer reported Thursday that Musk and his lieutenants were struggling to figure out just how many employees had declined to check the “yes” box on his Google form, and that Twitter would be closing down access to its offices for a few days as an extra precaution.

The departures raise new questions about whether the remaining Twitter engineers will be able to reliably keep the service up and running. Current and former employees are already speculating that the latest exodus could further put Twitter’s ability to function at risk, especially with the start of the World Cup a few days away.

Twitter no longer has communications staff, but Musk so far hasn't publicly commented on the resignations.

Elon Musk is changing Twitter’s remote work rules yet again amid deadline for employees to commit to his vision for a “hardcore” company. Musk, who previously banned remote work at Twitter, has now indicated that some remote work is possible, Bloomberg and The Verge report.

“Regarding remote work, all that is required for approval is that your manager takes responsibility for ensuring that you are making an excellent contribution,” Musk wrote in a new memo to Twitter staff. He added that teams should be meeting in person at least once a month though weekly meetings are “ideal.”

Musk’s latest comments on remote work come one day after Twitter employees were told they had to agree they “want to be part of the new Twitter” where the expectation will be “long hours at high intensity." Workers who wouldn’t check the “yes” box on the accompanying Google Form would be provided severance.

Now, it seems Musk is concerned that not enough employees are buying into his vision of an“extremely hardcore” Twitter. Bloomberg reports that Musk has been pitching “key employees” on his plans and that he has tapped other leaders “to convince employees to stay” on at the company.

But while the allowance of some remote work may seem like a victory for Twitter employees, who have enjoyed a “work from anywhere” policy for more than two years, Musk made it clear that he was more than willing to punish managers for remote employees who fall short of his expectations. “At risk of stating the obvious, any manager who falsely claims that someone reporting to them is doing excellent work or that a given role is essential, whether remote or not, will be exited from the company,” he wrote.

Since Musk took over Twitter, the employees who survived the initial job cuts have faced growing uncertainty and mounting pressure as the new CEO has prioritized features like paid verification. Esther Crawford, a Twitter manager who has been leading the revamped Twitter Blue, tweeted a photo of herself sleeping on the floor of a Twitter conference room in the days immediately after Musk’s takeover.

But not everyone has been as willing, or able, to adapt to Musk’s demands. And a Twitter lawyer recently told other employees that Musk’s requirement for workers to show up in the office or get fired might be illegal. Now, it seems at least one former employee is testing that notion, and has filed a lawsuit alleging that Musk’s new policies are discriminatory against workers with disabilities.

A group of Democratic senators have asked the FTC to investigate Elon Musk over his handling of users’ privacy and security in the wake of his takeover of Twitter. In a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan, the senators cite Musk’s botched rollout of Twitter Blue’s paid verifications, as well as the departures of Twitter’s top privacy and security executives.

The letter, signed by seven senators, including Elizabeth Warren, Dianne Feinstein and Richard Blumenthal, follows a widely-publicized warning from a lawyer at Twitter that Musk could be exposing the company to billions of dollars in fines from the FTC.

“In recent weeks, Twitter’s new Chief Executive Officer, Elon Musk, has taken alarming steps that have undermined the safety and integrity of the platform,” the senators write, noting that his actions “could already represent a violation of the FTC’s consent decree.” Under the terms of a 2011 agreement with the FTC, Twitter is required to review new features for potential privacy issues and regularly send reports to the FTC. The recent departures of top pirivacy and security executives came just ahead of a deadline to send one of those reports, according toThe New York Times.

In their letter, the senators write that the FCC should investigate Musk and other executives’ actions. “We urge the Commission to vigorously oversee its consent decree with Twitter and to bring enforcement actions against any breached or business practices that are unfair or deceptive, including bringing civil penalties and imposing liability on individual Twitter executives where appropriate,” they write.

It’s unclear if the FTC plans to launch such an investigation, but an FTC spokesperson said last week that the agency was “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern,” according toCNBC.

The head of Amazon’s hardware division has confirmed that the tech giant is cutting jobs. Dave Limp, who leads the company’s Devices & Services organization, told his team that Amazon would “consolidate some teams and programs” and that “some roles will no longer be required.”

“It pains me to have to deliver this news as we know we will lose talented Amazonians from the Devices & Services org as a result,” Limp wrote in a note to staff shared by Amazon. “While I know this news is tough to digest, I do want to emphasize that the Devices & Services organization remains an important area of investment for Amazon, and we will continue to invent on behalf of our customers.”

Limp didn’t share how many employees would be affected, but an earlier report in The New York Times indicated as many as 10,000 jobs could be cut as a result of the layoffs. Limp said that Amazon was providing employees with “a package that includes a separation payment, transitional benefits, and external job placement support.” He added that some workers may be able to find different jobs within Amazon.

Amazon is the latest tech giant to lay off large numbers of staff in recent weeks. Meta cut 11,000 jobs last week, its first-ever mass-layoffs, and Twitter laid off about half its staff and cut thousands of contractor jobs.

Elon Musk has set a new date for Twitter Blue’s paid verification to return: November 29th. The new date comes just a few days after the company paused the roll out and halted new sign-ups after the site was overrun by pranksters and scammers impersonating brands, celebrities and other high-profile accounts.

Musk said the return date was set to give the company enough time “to make sure that it is rock solid.” Musk didn’t say what changes may come with Blue’s relaunch, but the company has already brought back “official” labels in an effort to reassure advertisers. Musk added that verified Twitter users will be unable to change their display names without losing their checkmark “until name is confirmed by Twitter to meet Terms of Service.”

Twitter, which was losing advertisers even before paid verification launched, has seen even more brands pull back from the platform since the botched rollout of Twitter Blue. In addition to the “official” labels, Musk has proposed other was companies may be better able to identify official accounts, including a suggestion that organizations will be able to “identify which other Twitter accounts are actually associated with them.” It’s unclear how that idea might fit into Twitter’s revamped verification plans.

We’ve reached out to Twitter for more information, but the company no longer has a communications team.