Twitter Executives Quit Amid Company Turmoil

Just days after Twitter laid off thousands of employees, a number of top executives from teams working on privacy and security at the platform have reportedly resigned.

As reported by CNN, Twitter’s chief information security officer announced their resignation on Thursday, vacating one of the company’s most critical roles just as scrutiny is mounting over Twitter’s future and the erratic decisions of its new owner, Elon Musk.

In a tweet, Lea Kissner, the former CISO, said they were looking forward to figuring out their next steps.

“I’ve made the hard decision to leave Twitter,” Kissner tweeted. “I’ve had the opportunity to work with amazing people and I’m so proud of the privacy, security, and IT teams and the work we’ve done.”

Kissner didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did they publicly offer their reasons for leaving Twitter.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of integrity and safety also resigned from the company on Thursday, according to a source familiar with the situation. In the days following Musk’s acquisition of the company, Roth emerged as a public voice explaining and defending some of the many changes that were being implemented. He joined Musk on a Twitter Spaces discussion on Wednesday to assuage concerns about the platform’s handling of harmful content amid the changes.

Their resignations are the latest example of the internal turmoil that has rocked Twitter following mass layoffs at the company.

Kissner’s departure reportedly coincided with the resignations of multiple other top Twitter leaders Wednesday evening over fears about the company’s legal exposure before the Federal Trade Commission, according to an internal Slack message viewed by CNN. According to the Slack message, Twitter chief privacy officer Damien Kieran resigned on Wednesday evening.

Kieran posted a tweet on Thursday evening that appeared to reference his own resignation. The independent journalist Casey Newton and The Verge first reported the resignations.
In the Slack message, a Twitter employee wrote that Musk’s sole priority is “recouping the losses he’s incurring as a result of failing to get out of his binding obligation to buy Twitter.”