Could a Change in Twitter’s CEO Be Bad News for Adult?

In news that reportedly caused the value of Twitter shares to jump, Elliot Management Corp. is making a push to replace Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. While the reasons for the firm’s desire to replace Dorsey likely don’t include concern that the platform is too adult-friendly, that adult-friendly disposition may change in the leadership shuffle anyway, should Elliot succeed in elbowing Dorsey aside.

In addition to being CEO of Twitter, Dorsey is also the CEO of payment processing service Square – and this unusual dual role has always unsettled some investors in the company. Adding to their trepidation is Dorsey’s stated intent to move to Africa for at least a few months around the middle of this year.

Thus far, it’s unclear who Elliot (and other investors) would want as a replacement for Dorsey, or whether talk of replacing the CEO will turn into action to do the same. Still, any time there’s change at the top of a corporation, there’s the possibility of status quo-altering changes taking place down the chain of command, across the corporate culture and within that company’s policies.

The potential impact of Twitter changing its CEO is entirely speculative, of course – as is, for that matter, the notion the company will change its CEO. Still, since Twitter now stands alone among the major social media platforms in being adult-friendly, it’s not unreasonable to be concerned about possible shifts in its policies, regardless of what might cause those shifts.

At a time when an increasing number of politicians on either side of the Democrat/Republican divide are talking about amending, or even repealing, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a new CEO might decide the time is ripe for Twitter to join its social media brethren in adopting acceptable use and content policies which prohibit tweeting sexually-explicit images, or even links thereto.

True, most of the talk about amending Section 230 stems from issues other than sexually explicit content, like platforms’ alleged stifling of politically conservative perspectives. The constant conflation of volitional sex work and “sex trafficking,” paired with Congress’ willingness to carve out exceptions to Section 230 (like FOSTA) in response to the latter is enough to make you wonder whether tightening up its content policies could strike an incoming CEO as an idea with merit.

It wouldn’t be unreasonable for a new Twitter CEO, trying to read between the lines of comments coming out of Congress, to conclude that reducing the amount of sexual expression the platform allows would be a smart move. After all, when Dorsey appeared before the Senate back in September of 2018, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin cited FOSTA in discussing the possibility of declaring additional exceptions to Section 230, in order to hold platforms more responsible for things like the distribution of opioids.

“Just like how we passed FOSTA and SESTA, we passed bills that held you liable and responsible,” Manchin said at the time. “Don’t you think we should do the same with opiate drugs and the way they’re being used in your platform? Would you all support us doing that?”

Given the trend of state legislatures around the country declaring pornography to be a public health crisis/hazard (Alabama just became the 16th state to do so), an incoming Twitter CEO might decide that even if the company is unlikely to face any legal liability over users Tweeting pornographic images or sharing links to such, it might be a good public relations move to distance the company from porn.

If Twitter does become off limits to adult companies, performers and marketers, how will you move to make up for its absence as a marketplace? Where will you establish the same sort of visibility? These aren’t insurmountable challenges, but they’re significant ones – and the time to consider how to tackle them is before you need to do so,

Again, this is all speculative – but given the importance of Twitter as a mechanism for adult performers to promote their work, interact with their fans and stay in touch with each other, there’s ample reason for those of us in the adult industry to keep a close eye on what happens at the top of the Twitter leadership team. A change at the top of that team may not impact the company’s content policies, or lead to a rethink on the platform’s adult-friendliness, but it can’t hurt to think ahead about how you’ll adjust if Twitter does follow in the footsteps of other platforms by taking a harder line on adult content in the future.

In other words, to put a spin on a couple old clichés, it’s better to regret taking the time to craft a plan that proves unnecessary than it is to regret not having plan when one is needed.

Jack Dorsey photo by cellanr, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. It has been resized and cropped.