Twitter’s diversity chief to quit after just one year
Twitter’s controversial diversity chief has announced he will stand down by the end of the month just over a year after being installed in the post.
Jeffrey Siminoff drew scorn from critics for being a white male tasked with boosting the appointment of minorities within the social media business.
His departure comes amid Twitter's efforts to clean up its image, with the release of a new suite of anti-abuse tools designed to give members additional options when confronted by trolls.
Such measures of themselves won’t remove abusive tweets from the network but they will limit the ability of trolls to make their voices heard. This comes in the wake of widespread criticism of perceived inaction on the part of the micro-blogging service to get its own house in order, which is widely considered to have played a part in its failed sale last year.
Twitter’s 2016 diversity report indicated that Siminoff had met only limited success at increasing the representation of black people on its payroll having failed to recruit any more Hispanic staff. White employees made up 57% of its workforce with Asian employees reaching 32%.