Twitter Reportedly Makes More Cuts To Online Safety Teams – Bloomberg reported that Twitter has made additional changes to its trust and safety team in charge of international content moderation as well as a section managing hate speech and harassment. The move intensifies existing fears that the company’s new owner, Elon Musk, is dismantling its regulation of offensive content and disinformation. Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter has had a public relations crisis marked by firings, resignations, falling profits, reluctant advertisers, and lawsuits for unpaid payments.
The latest round of layoffs affected a dozen employees at Twitter’s Dublin and Singapore headquarters, according to Bloomberg sources who sought anonymity. Among them were Twitter’s senior director of revenue policy, Analuisa Dominguez, and the recently hired head of site integrity for the Asia-Pacific region, Nur Azhar Bin Ayob. Also terminated were employees in charge of Twitter’s disinformation policy, worldwide appeals, and state media.
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Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, revealed to Bloomberg that a number of team members had been terminated, but denied that other areas were affected. “It made more sense to consolidate teams under one leader (instead of two) for example,” Irwin told Bloomberg by email, adding Twitter removed roles in areas in the company that did not have enough “volume” to warrant support. Irwin said Twitter would continue having a head of revenue policy and a head for its Asia-Pacific region for trust and safety.
She also stated that the corporation increased its appeals department’s workforce. Since October, when he acquired the company for $44 billion, Musk has been on a mission to restructure Twitter. The billionaire entrepreneur has described his vision for a “digital town square” that upholds free speech and healthy debate. He has also claimed that damaging content on the platform has decreased since his acquisition. However, academics and rights campaigners discovered that offensive language, hateful rhetoric, and malicious information had thrived on Twitter since Musk’s arrival.
In the same month that banned accounts belonging to far-right reactionaries were reinstated, a number of famous tech journalists were momentarily suspended from Twitter. NBC News identified at least hundreds of Twitter accounts trying to sell or trade child sexual exploitation materials, an issue that Musk had previously stated will be a top focus. Reuters reported last month, citing sources familiar with the situation, that Musk had ordered the removal of a tool that offered suicide prevention sites to users who searched for certain content.
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