Twitter’s prime security government says election integrity is a “top priority” for the corporate at the same time as the corporate has shed half of its employees within the final 24 hours. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of security and one of many firm leaders to outlive mass layoffs, took to Twitter to downplay moderation issues raised by activists and advertisers in current days.
“Yesterday’s reduction in force affected approximately 15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact,” Roth tweeted. “With early voting underway in the US, our efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”
Roth’s feedback come hours after the NAACP joined a coalition of activists and civil rights organizations to name for advertisers to droop spending with Twitter. While Musk met with civil rights leaders earlier this week, these calling for a boycott stated the corporate’s deep employees cuts undermined his promise to keep up Twitter’s election safety insurance policies and its hate speech guidelines.
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More than 80% of our incoming content material moderation quantity was fully unaffected by this entry change. The every day quantity of moderation actions we take stayed regular by means of this era. pic.twitter.com/rSGKtq0e3J
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 4, 2022
Roth, who’s thus far the one Twitter government moreover Musk to publicly weigh in on the corporate’s insurance policies following Musk’s takeover, additionally tried to deal with reviews concerning the impression employees cuts would have on security.
“Last week, for security reasons, we restricted access to our internal tools for some users, including some members of my team,” he stated. “Most of the 2,000+ content moderators working on front-line review were not impacted, and access will be fully restored in the coming days.” But whereas a lot of Roth’s Trust and Safety group could have been spared, quite a few different groups whose work touches on questions of safety weren’t.
As NBC News reported, Twitter’s curation group, which labored to counter misinformation on the platform, was axed fully. Many engineering roles that cope with questions of safety had been additionally lower, as had been quite a few employees in coverage and communications.
Again, to be crystal clear, Twitter’s sturdy dedication to content material moderation stays completely unchanged.
In truth, now we have truly seen hateful speech at occasions this week decline *beneath* our prior norms, opposite to what it’s possible you’ll learn within the press.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022
On Friday, Musk stated that the layoffs had been essential. “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” he tweeted, including that staff had been supplied three months of severance. “Again, to be crystal clear, Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.”