Twitter has attempted to reassure those concerned that moderation on the platform will suffer from staff cutbacks.
While it has been suggested that 50% of the company's staff will be sacked, in a set of tweets, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of Safety & Integrity, said new CEO Elon Musk's layoffs affected “approximately 15% of our Trust & Safety staff". According to Roth, the front-line moderation team has experienced the “least” impact from the mass layoffs.
He continued: “Last week, for security reasons, we restricted access to our internal tools for some users, including some members of my team. Most of the 2,000-plus content moderators working on front-line review were not impacted, and access will be fully restored in the coming days.”
Roth added: “More than 80% of our incoming content moderation volume was completely unaffected by this access change. The daily volume of moderation actions we take stayed steady through this period.”
The Safety & Integrity head however admitted that the disruption caused by Musk’s takeover has meant Twitter has deprioritized “a few workflows like account access (lost password requests), and some suspension appeals.”
Elon Musk retweeted Roth’s clarifications and followed up by tweeting: “Again, to be crystal clear, Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline below our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press."
The mass layoffs have caused an uproar, and it’s been reported a group of ex-Twitter employees has filed a class-action lawsuit against the social media giant for violating federal and state WARN acts. The acts stipulate that large employers like Twitter must give at least 60 days' notice before a mass layoff is to begin.
Musk has slapped down claims of illegal dismissal, saying in a tweet yesterday that “everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”
However, per a CNBC report, staff in India were allegedly offered just two months of severance pay.