Elon Musk confirmed media expectations regarding mass layoffs on Twitter – almost 50% of the staff have already said goodbye to the company ( they were informed of the dismissal by email ). But the biggest cuts have been to Twitter’s trust and safety teams — which looks worrisome enough ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

However, Yoel Roth, head of the company’s security and integrity department, noted that the company’s “basic moderation capabilities” are still in place.

Last week, the company restricted access to some internal tools for security reasons – the exact time is not specified, but it roughly coincides with the moment when Elon Musk took over the company.

The daily volume of moderation activity remained “stable,” Roth said, although he only confirmed that claim with a vague chart of the number of tweets that were “reviewed and acted upon daily.”

Well

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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. pic.twitter.com/rSGKtq0e3J

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 4, 2022

Musk wrote on Friday night, “we have indeed seen hostile speech drop from previous norms this week.”

However, according to Roth, Twitter had to “reprioritize some workflows” such as removing password recovery requests and “some” account suspension appeals. Twitter is “working to get them back online in the coming days.”

What AREN’T we doing? In the short term, we’ve had to deprioritize a few workflows—like account access (lost password requests), and some suspension appeals. We’re working to get these back online in the days to come.

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 4, 2022

Twitter moderation has raised concerns ahead of the US midterm elections next week. But Roth notes that election integrity remains a “priority.”

Musk, who said last week that Twitter would create a dedicated content moderation board, also stressed that the company is focusing on moderation.

“Again, to be extremely clear, Twitter’s strict commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged,” he tweeted on Friday.

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.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022

Source: The Verge

• After several months of litigation, Elon Musk did acquire Twitter , adding the company to his already large business empire. The billionaire appointed himself CEO and fired a large part of the company’s previous management.
• As expected, Musk cut about half of the company’s staff – the decision was made in order to reduce costs. Twitter has to pay off about $1 billion in debt a year, more than the company’s current earnings for the year.
• Musk also planned large-scale changes in the work of the social network itself – in particular , an update to the Twitter Blue subscription , which will now cost $ 8 per month for the United States (in other countries the price will be adjusted in accordance with purchasing power parity) and every user of the social network will be able to purchase it.
• The creation of a special council for content moderation on Twitter has been announced – it is he who will decide on the unblocking of accounts (in particular, the page of Donald Trump).