Vijaya Gadde
Profile
Twitter's Head of Legal, Policy and Trust from 2013 until Elon Musk's acquisition in 2022 — the single most powerful individual over content moderation decisions at one of the world's most consequential speech platforms during its most censorious period. Gadde personally approved the suppression of the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story days before the 2020 presidential election — a decision later described by Twitter's own head of Trust & Safety as having no policy basis. She was the decision-maker behind the permanent ban of President Donald Trump in January 2021 and oversaw the construction of Twitter's shadowbanning and visibility filtering systems that suppressed thousands of accounts without notification. The Twitter Files revealed her central role in operationalising government agency requests for content moderation and her awareness of the political skew in enforcement. She reportedly wept during an all-hands meeting when Musk announced he was acquiring the platform.