Twitter new owner Elon Musk in addition, it is gutting teams that are fighting disinformation on the social media platform, as external moderators found out over the weekend that they are unemployed.
Twitter and other major social media companies rely heavily on contractors to track hate and other harmful content.
But many of these content keepers have gone out the door now, for the first time ever Twitter laid off most of its full-time employees via email on November 4 and now it aims to eliminate countless number of contract orders.
Melissa Ingle, who worked on Twitter as a contractor for over a year, was one of many contractors to say they were fired without notice on Saturday. She said she was concerned about the increase in Twitter fraud with the number of employees leaving.
“I love this platform and I really enjoyed working with the company and trying to improve it. And I just really fear what will slip through the cracks, ”she said on Sunday.
Ingle, a data scientist, said she worked on Twitter’s data and monitoring unit for the civil integrity team. Her job was to write algorithms to search for political disinformation on the platform in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Japan, Argentina and others.
Ingle said she was “pretty sure I’m done” when she couldn’t access her work email on Saturday. The notice from the contract company where she was hired came two hours later.
“I will just post my CV and talk to people,” she said. “I have two children. And I’m worried that I will be able to give them a nice Christmas, you know, and mundane things that are important. I just think it’s especially heartless at the moment.”
Content moderator Sarah Roberts, associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, tweeted on Sunday that some “more than 3,000 Twitter employees were canned yesterday.”
Twitter did not reveal how many contract workers it cut. The company has gutted its communications department and has not responded to media requests for information since Musk took power.
Performers are also doing other work to help keep Twitter up and running,
“All performers are not content moderation agents,” said Roberts. “Contractors play many key roles within the company. But almost all moderation agents are contractors. “
In the beginning after Musk bought Twitter for $ 44 billion in late October and recalled the board of directors and top managementBillionaire Tesla CEO has tried to reassure civil rights organizations and advertisers that the platform can continue to stifle hatred.
This message was echoed by the then head of Twitter content moderation, Yoel Roth, who tweeted that the November 4 layoffs only affected “15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to about 50% of company-wide cuts), with our frontline moderating staff experiences the least influence. ‘
Roth has from the moment of resignation from the companyjoining the exodus of high-level leaders entrusted with privacy, cybersecurity and compliance.
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