But for years, public pressure from government officials, civil society and the media pushed technology companies to invest in equipment and tools that could, at least to some extent, address problems of hate speech or misinformation. on their platforms, so they could say they were doing a good job. -Effort of faith to address the problem.
Musk’s purchase of Twitter marked a change, according to six former Twitter and Meta trust and security employees.
When Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, he quickly laid off more than 50 percent of the company’s workers, including Almost all trusted personnel, security and company policies.—the people in charge of creating and enforcing the platform’s policies around topics such as hate speech, violent content, conspiracy theories, and misinformation and disinformation. Since then, Meta, Google, Amazon and Discord They have all made cuts to trust and security personnel.
Shortly after Musk purged Twitter of its trust and security teams, other companies began layoffs. In November 2022, Meta laid off 11,000 employeesincluding many trusted and safe employees. In January 2023, Google did the same and laid off 12,000 people. Earlier this year, Amazon-owned Twitch dissolved its Security Advisory Council.
“I think Elon really opened the floodgates,” says one former Meta employee. “Then other tech brands said, ‘We can do that too, because we won’t be the black sheep.’”
Meta spokesperson Corey Chambliss tells WIRED that the company has “40,000 people around the world working on safety and security, more than during the 2020 cycle, when we had a global team of 35,000 people working in this area.” , although he did not mention how many of them. those people are staff versus contract workers.
Musk’s sudden layoffs meant that “anyone could come in and kindly fire their teams and give them severance, and it was better. Better,” says a former Twitter employee who was fired by Musk.
After Musk fired trust and safety staff, experts warned that this cut, along with Musk’s “free speech absolutism,” would allow toxic content to flood the platform and ultimately lead to an exodus of users. and advertisers, which would lead to the eventual demise of Twitter. Hate speech and misinformation increased, and advertisers withdrew their money. Last year, X fired members of what remained of his election team. Around the same time, Musk published in Xsaying, “Oh, you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yes, they are gone.”