Vijaya Gadde came reluctantly to the decision that cemented her reputation on the right as Twitter’s “chief censor.” For years, the company’s top lawyer had resisted calls to boot President Donald Trump from his favorite social media platform.
Even after a violent pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Gadde explained during an emotional virtual company town hall two days later that Trump hadn’t broken enough of Twitter’s rules against glorification of violence to merit a permanent ban of his account...
Many researchers and experts in online harassment say Gadde’s policies have made Twitter safer for its roughly 229 million daily users and say they fear Musk will dismantle them if the sale goes through.
“If Musk takes things in the direction he has been signaling — which is a rather simplistic view that more or less anything goes in the name of free speech — we will certainly see the platform go back to square one,” said Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University.