Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, is further decimating the groups that fight disinformation on the social media network after it was announced over the weekend that outsourced moderators would no longer be employed.
To find hate speech and other bad information, Twitter and other major social media companies have mainly depended on contractors.
However, many content censors have already left the company, first when Twitter fired many full-time employees by email on November 4 and then again as it seeks to axe countless contract positions.
One of the contractors who said they were fired on Saturday without warning was Melissa Ingle, who has worked as a Twitter contractor for over a year.
Data scientist Ingle claimed to work for Twitter’s civic integrity team’s data and monitoring division.
Writing algorithms to discover political falsehoods on the platform in nations like the U.S., Brazil, Japan, Argentina, and other places as part of her work.
When Ingle could not access her work email on Saturday, she said she was “very confident I was done for.” Two hours later, she received a notification from the contracting firm that had hired her.
She added, “I’ll chat to individuals and get my resumes out there. “I have two youngsters. And I’m concerned about being able to offer them a good Christmas and other small but significant things. I believe that doing this at this time is callous.
After dismissing Twitter’s board of directors and key executives and purchasing the social media network for $44 billion in late October, Tesla CEO Elon Musk sought to reassure advertisers and civil rights organizations that the platform could continue to combat hate speech.
Yoel Roth, who was in charge of content moderation at Twitter at the time, reaffirmed that point by tweeting that the layoffs on November 4 only affected “15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.”
Since then, Roth has left the corporation, joining several other top executives in charge of data security, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance.
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