罢飞颈迟迟别谤鈥檚 is further gutting the teams that battle misinformation on the social media platform as outsourced moderators learned over the weekend they were out of a job.
Twitter and other big social media firms have relied heavily on contractors to track hate and other harmful content.
But many of those content watchdogs have now headed out the door, first when and now as it moves to eliminate an untold number of contract jobs.
Melissa Ingle, who worked at Twitter as a contractor for more than a year, was one of a number of contractors who said they were terminated without notification on Saturday. She said she鈥檚 concerned that there鈥檚 going to be an increase in abuse on Twitter with the number of workers leaving.
鈥淚 love the platform and I really enjoyed working at the company and trying to make it better. And I鈥檓 just really fearful of what鈥檚 going to slip through the cracks,鈥� she said Sunday.
Ingle, a data scientist, said she worked on the data and monitoring arm of 罢飞颈迟迟别谤鈥檚 civic integrity team. Her job involved writing algorithms to find political misinformation on the platform in countries such as the U.S., Brazil, Japan, Argentina and elsewhere.
Ingle said she was 鈥減retty sure I was done for鈥� when she couldn鈥檛 access her work email Saturday. The notification from the contracting company she鈥檇 been hired by came two hours later.
鈥淚鈥檒l just be putting my resumes out there and talking to people,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 have two children. And I鈥檓 worried about being able to give them a nice Christmas, you know, and just mundane things like that, that are important. I just think it鈥檚 particularly heartless to do this at this time.鈥�
Content-moderation expert Sarah Roberts, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, tweeted Sunday that around 鈥�3,000+ contractor employees of Twitter were canned last night.鈥�
Twitter hasn鈥檛 said how many contract workers it cut. The company gutted its communications department and hasn鈥檛 responded to media requests for information since Musk took over.
Contractors also do other jobs to help keep Twitter running,
鈥淎ll contractors are not content moderation agents,鈥� Roberts said. 鈥淐ontractors fulfill many key roles inside the company. But almost all moderation agents are contractors.鈥�
In the early days after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October and , the billionaire Tesla CEO sought to assure civil rights groups and advertisers that the platform could continue tamping down hate.
That message was reiterated by 罢飞颈迟迟别谤鈥檚 then-head of content moderation, Yoel Roth, who tweeted that the Nov. 4 layoffs only affected 鈥�15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.鈥�
Roth has , joining an exodus of high-level leaders who were tasked with privacy protection, cybersecurity and complying with regulations.
Barbara Ortutay And Matt O鈥檅rien, The Associated Press
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