Elon Musk Cuts Outsourced Content Moderators From Twitter

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has learned that an outsourced moderator lost his job over the weekend, further hurting the team fighting misinformation on the social media platform.

Twitter and other large social media companies have relied heavily on contractors to track hateful and other harmful content.

But many of these content watchdogs, first firing many of their full-time employees via email on November 4th, and now moving toward cutting a huge number of contract workers, have been forced to leave the house. I’m waiting for

Melissa Ingle, who worked as a contractor on Twitter for more than a year, was one of a number of contractors who said Saturday they had been laid off without notice. He said he was concerned that abuse would increase.

“I love the platform and really enjoyed working for the company and trying to make it better. Told.

Data scientist Ingle said he worked in the data and surveillance division of Twitter’s civil protection team. Her work included writing algorithms for spotting political misinformation on platforms in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Japan, and Argentina.

Ingle said when she couldn’t access her work email on Saturday, “I knew it was over.” Notice from the contractor she was hired came two hours later.

“I just put out my resume and talk to people,” she said. , it is important. I find it particularly heartless to do this at this time. ”

Sarah Roberts, a content management expert and associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, tweeted on Sunday that “more than 3,000 Twitter contractor employees were laid off last night.”

Twitter has not disclosed how many contract workers it has cut. The company has wrecked its communications department and has not responded to requests for information from the media since Musk took office.

Contractors also perform other tasks to keep Twitter running.

“Not all contractors are content moderation agents. Contractors play many important roles within a company. But almost all moderation agents are contractors.”

At the beginning of Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in late October, firing its board and executive team, billionaire Tesla CEO said the platform could continue to quell hate, citing civil rights groups and advertisers. tried to guarantee

The message was echoed by Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of content moderation at the time, who said the layoffs on November 4 were “15% of the Trust & Safety organization (about 50% of the company as a whole) and in contrast to ),” he tweeted. Frontline moderation staff are the least impacted.”

Roth has since resigned from the company, joining an exodus of high-level leaders tasked with privacy protection, cybersecurity and regulatory compliance.