WHO ARE THE ONLINE SAFETY EXPERTS?
What makes Christopher E. Bouzy and Yoel Roth the most respected and relied upon Online Safety Experts™ in the world? [UPDATED]
Have you ever wondered who decides who the so-called ‘experts’ are? Christopher Bouzy and Yoel Roth are two of the most impactful experts in the world as both were relied upon to determine who and what millions of people were allowed to read and write on Twitter for years. I decided to find out what qualified Chris and Yoel to be online safety experts.
UPDATE: One week after I published this piece the Daily Mail published a hit piece on Christopher Bouzy:
EXCLUSIVE: Tech CEO who slammed Twitter and trolls in Meghan and Harry's Netflix finale is being SUED for calling a New York lawyer the 'son of two crackheads' - as his company is labeled a 'digital attack dog'
CHRISTOPHER E. BOUZY
Christopher Bouzy is the founder and CEO of one of the most respected online safety companies called BotSentinal. Reportedly, Bouzy is a college dropout who spent two years as a computer technician with the New York City Department of Education. He spent the next thirteen years fixing computers as a freelancer before coming up with the idea to mint his own cryptocurrency called Black Coin in 2013. The endeavor eventually failed, erasing the net worth of multiple people of color while netting Bouzy less than $100,000. Bouzy followed up his failed FTX-style venture with a new company called BotSentinal.
The Rand Corporation1 describes Bouzy’s BotSentinel as one of the leading platforms to detect and track troll bots and untrustworthy Twitter accounts. Rand claims, without evidence, that Bouzy’s company uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to study Twitter accounts, classifying them as trustworthy or untrustworthy, and to identify bots. As a result, Christopher Bouzy was identified by The Lawfare Insitute as a contributors2 to the LawFare publication alongside Jim Baker the FBI general counsel recently fired from Twitter, and Dr. Scott Chaprior a law professor at Yale.
Bouzy operates BotSentinel as a one-man-show from his home in North Bergen, New Jersey where he decides the fate of millions of Americans who use Twitter. Accounts identified by Bouzy as those he claims are bots or those that he judges as spreading misinformation or hate were, until recently, routinely censored and suspended by Twitter. Proclaimed an expert by the Rand Corporation and LawFare, Bouzy’s declarations were taken very seriously by the company. Bouzy’s power to deplatform objectionable content and users became so well known that Hollywood stars like Amber Heard began hiring him to help them silence their critics on the platform.3
Suddenly, with high-profile clients like Amber Heard and Lisa Page, Bouzy was sought out by mainstream media outlets to comment on important issues related to online censorship and suppression since he was an ‘online safety expert’. Christopher Bouzy, a college dropout struggling with a number of issues including eviction, bankruptcy, and defamation lawsuits, is one of America’s top internet safety experts. No one bothered to ask Bouzy what his qualifications were. Did his two years fixing computers in the New York City Department of Education qualify him? Or was his failed launch of a cryptocurrency for African Americans the experience he leaned on? No. No one bothered to ask. They just accepted that Mr. Bouzy was qualified to decide which Americans had the right to be heard and which should be silenced. Period.
YOEL ROTH
Until recently Yoel Roth was the head of Trust and Safety at Twitter. Before joining Twitter he convinced Sharrona Pearl, his doctoral supervisor at UPenn, to let him write his thesis about his encounters with homosexual men on the gay dating app called Grindr. Six years ago he completed his thesis titled 'Gay Data' fulfilling the requirements for his Ph.D. in Philosophy.45
Before completing his doctorate Yoel could be found working the genius bar at an Apple store in Philly and once it was completed he took a role as a researcher for the Dangerous Speech Project before joining Twitter. The project is based on the thesis that “People don’t commit violence against other groups - or even condone it - spontaneously. First, they must be taught to see other people as pests, vermin, aliens, or threats.” If you’re familiar with any of Yoel’s various attacks on conservatives it shouldn’t surprise you that he didn’t last very long at the project. In fact, Yoel began using the sort of dehumanizing language the Dangerous Speech Project sought to eliminate almost immediately after joining Twitter. Here are some of the more shocking examples.
Yoel on President Trump:
‘I’m Just Saying, We Fly Over Those States That Voted for a Racist Tangerine for a Reason’
~ tweeted by Yoel Roth shortly after the election of President Trump
Yoel on Senator McConnell:
How does a personality-free bag of farts like Mitch McConnell actually win elections?
~ tweeted by Yoel Roth shortly before the midterm elections
Yoel on White House Staffers:
Yes, that person in the pink hat is clearly a bigger threat to your brand of feminism than ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.
~ tweeted by Yoel Roth to feminists upset about other feminists
Yoel on Press Secretary Conway:
“Today on Meet The Press, we’re speaking with Joseph Goebbels about the first 100 days…” —What I hear whenever Kellyanne is on a news show
~ tweeted by Yoel Roth comparing the press secretary to Nazi propagandist
Yoel on EVERYONE who Disagreed with Obama:
You’re right: the reason you disagree with President Obama has nothing to do with his party. It has to do with the fact that he’s black.
~ tweeted by Yoel Roth claiming anyone who opposes Obama is racist
These are just a few of the public statements Yoel Roth made over the years he worked at Twitter - one can only imagine what sort of things he said in private. Yoel’s hatred for former President Trump and his supporters is very real. In light of that, it is reasonable to assume that he wouldn’t hire people he associated with Nazis to work for Twitter’s Trust & Safety department. In fact, if you take a look at the sort of things Yoel’s team tweets it is clear they have disdain for half of the country - Alexandra Popken, Aishwarya Dingre, James Alexander, Rodrigo Riaza Pérez, Fay Johnson, Natalie Notaney, Sunita Nakhate, Frédéric Dubut, Colin Stuart, Ella Irwin, Laura Isabel Márquez Orta, and Del Harvey plus 600+ additional people…
While Yoel’s political bias is clear but how he became Twitter’s top online safety expert is not so clear. Perhaps his experience doxxing and outing gay men who spurned his advances on Grindr give him some insight into ‘dangerous’ online activity (to be fair he has publicly stated that he regrets his actions).
