When Elon Musk took over Twitter, since rebranded as X, his favourite letter of the alphabet, he went on a firing spree. Chief amongst these ejected had been individuals engaged on belief and security, the work of conserving dangerous content material, from hate speech to baby exploitation, off the platform.
In entrance of a US Senate committee in the present day, X CEO Linda Yaccarino appeared to tacitly acknowledge that Musk went too far in tearing down the platform’s guardrails, indicating the corporate was partially reversing course. She stated that X had elevated the variety of belief and security workers by 10 p.c previously 14 months and deliberate to rent 100 new moderators in Austin centered on baby sexual exploitation.
Yaccarino spoke at a Senate listening to known as to debate social networks’ failure to curb baby sexual abuse, alongside the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Discord. She additionally stated a number of instances that “lower than 1 p.c” of X customers had been below 18. That declare—and her announcement that after 14 months of Musk’s possession and deep cuts to belief and security, the corporate was now hiring new moderators—raised the eyebrows of social platform consultants and former Twitter staff.
Theodora Skeadas, a former member of Twitter’s belief and security crew laid off by Musk in November 2022, says that even after making the hires Yaccarino boasted of, X continues to be woefully understaffed for a serious social platform. “Except their technical techniques for flagging and eradicating content material have actually improved, 100 will not be sufficient,” says Skeadas. “And that appears unlikely as a result of they’ve fired so many engineers.” X didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Bonfire of the Mods
Shortly after buying Twitter in October 2022, Musk laid off almost half of Twitter’s staff, making deep cuts into the belief and security groups. Researchers and civil society organizations that had constructed relationships with the platform’s belief and security groups in an effort to alert them to hateful or problematic content material shortly discovered themselves with out anybody left on the platform to contact.
The platform was almost banned in Brazil within the run-up to the nation’s 2022 presidential runoffs, after the nation’s Electoral Courtroom fearful that Musk would enable election-related lies to unfold. A crew of educational researchers discovered that hate speech spiked after Musk took the helm, and final September, forward of a historic election yr, X fired 5 of the remaining belief and security employees specializing in combating mis- and disinformation.
Skeadas says that earlier than Musk took over, there have been about 400 Twitter workers engaged on belief and security, plus some 5,000 contractors who helped assessment content material on the platform. Most of these staffers and greater than 4,000 of the contractors had been laid off.
Even after Yaccarino’s claimed current improve in belief and security workers of greater than 10 p.c, the platform possible nonetheless has far fewer individuals engaged on conserving customers protected. There’s “no manner” the corporate has extra belief and security workers than it did earlier than Musk, Skeadas says. “If there have been 20 individuals left and so they employed two individuals, then that could be a 10 p.c improve, however that’s nonetheless nothing in comparison with earlier than,” she says.
