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Twitter’s Ex-Safety Head Flees Home After Musk’s Child Sexualization Smears: Report

The threats against Yoel Roth increased “exponentially” after Musk baselessly claimed he’d advocated for the sexualization of children in his PhD dissertation, CNN reports.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, left his home over threats stirred up by Elon Musk’s targeted smear campaign against him in recent days, CNN reported Monday, citing a source close to the matter. Roth’s departure from his home comes just days after Musk falsely implied that Roth, who is gay, had advocated for the sexualization of children in the past. On Saturday, Musk shared an excerpt from Roth’s 300-page 2016 PhD dissertation on Grindr, titled “Gay Data.” Alongside the snippet, in which Roth suggested that “safety strategies” should be crafted to protect queer youth who choose to use the app, Musk wrote, “Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis.” Deployment of the anti-LGBTQ+ trope that conflates queer identity with sympathy to pedophilia is a favorite smear tactic of far-right and conspiracy theorist circles. Though Roth had been the target of fierce criticism, largely from Musk’s disciples, since he quit Twitter in the early days of the billionaire’s takeover, the threats against him “escalated exponentially” following Musk’s baseless claim, CNN reported.