A day after accusations about Twitter’s security standards, the platform is merging two of its internal teams working on countering misinformation and spam accounts.
This was confirmed by a Twitter spokesperson to Reuters, who also named the head of this new wing Ella Irwin. Aside from this, Twitter’s CEO has sent an email to all the internal teams regarding the latest headlines on its security practices, defending against them.
Merging Internal Teams
2022 has been the worst so far for Twitter. The company strangled with lawsuits over its acquisition deal, facing a lot of heat from authorities over content takedown requests and, more recently – accusations of its lax security practices.
This was coming from Twitter’s ex-security officer – Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who filed a complaint with SEC, FTC, and DoJ against Twitter over various counts. He whistle blew the company’s outdated software usage, deep access to core tools for multiple people, violations of FTC terms, etc.
All these triggered Congress to start focusing on Twitter and could soon blast off with more security regulations if found legit. Amidst this, Twitter is said to be merging its health experienced team with its service team.
While the former works on fighting against misinformation and harmful content on the platform, the latter counters fake profiles (spam accounts) upon receiving review requests from the community.
They named the newly merged group as Health Products and Services (HPS) and appointed Ella Irwin as the head – who previously worked for Google and Amazon and joined Twitter in June this year.
In an internal memo obtained by Reuters, Irwin said to staff members as HPS will “ruthlessly prioritize” its projects. Further, “We need teams to focus on specific problems, working together as one team and no longer operating in silos.”
Also, a Twitter spokesperson said the latest reshuffling of teams “reflects [the company’s] continued commitment to prioritize, and focus [its] teams in pursuit of [its] goals.”
