Twitter Makes More Cuts To Trust, Safety Teams – Report

Elon Musk continues to hollow out his social networking platform Twitter, after more content moderation layoffs were reported in the media.

Bloomberg at the weekend reported that at least a dozen people were laid off from Twitter late last Friday, as Musk continues to sack the few remaining trust and safety team members left at the platform.

It comes after two of the last remaining executives at Twitter before Elon Musk took control resigned last week, with product engineering head Behnam Rezaei confirming on Twitter that he had left, as had Katie Marcotte, a 10-year Twitter employee and the company’s acting head of human resources.

Content moderation

Then at the weekend Bloomberg citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Musk made the cuts to Twitter’s already radically diminished trust and safety team that handles global content moderation, as well as to the unit related to hate speech and harassment.

It reported that at least a dozen more cuts on Friday night affected workers in the company’s Dublin and Singapore offices.

They reportedly included Nur Azhar Bin Ayob, the head of site integrity for Twitter’s Asia-Pacific region, a relatively recent hire; and Analuisa Dominguez, Twitter’s senior director of revenue policy.

Workers on teams handling the social network’s misinformation policy, global appeals and state media on the platform were also eliminate, Bloomberg reported.

Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, confirmed several members of the teams were cut but denied that they targeted some of the areas mentioned by Bloomberg.

“It made more sense to consolidate teams under one leader (instead of two) for example,” Irwin said in an emailed response to a request for comment.

She said Twitter did eliminate roles in areas of the company that didn’t get enough “volume” to justify continued support.

But she said that Twitter had increased staffing in its appeals department, and that it would continue to have a head of revenue policy and a head for the platform’s Asia-Pacific region for trust and safety.

Mass firings

Twitter and Elon Musk are already facing dozens of legal complaints and lawsuits, after he oversaw the firings of at least 5,000 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees and instituted a “hardcore” work environment for remaining staff.

Musk also purged nearly all of Twitter’s external contractors that worked on Twitter’s content moderation teams, dissolved its board of directors, and fired senior management – prompting a mass exodus of leading executives from the platform.

Twitter is also facing legal action for unpaid bills, and has been sued by a landlord in San Francisco for failing to pay rent on its headquarters in the city.

Twitter has also been sued for failing to pay for two charter flights, and legal action has begun from former staff who allege that Musk has not honoured his promise that dismissed staff would receive three months wages.