Twitter cuts staff dealing with hate speech, trust and safety
Twitter Inc., under new owner Elon Musk, has made deeper cuts to its already radically reduced trust and safety team, which deals with global content moderation, and its hate speech and harassment unit, according to people familiar with the matter.
At least a dozen other cuts on Friday night affected workers at the company’s Dublin and Singapore offices, according to the people, who asked not to be identified to discuss non-public changes. These included Nur Azhar Bin Ayob, Twitter’s head of site integrity for Asia Pacific, a relatively new hire; and Analuisa Dominguez, Senior Director of Revenue Policy at Twitter.
Staff on teams dealing with the social network’s misinformation policy, global appeals and state media on the platform have also been eliminated.
Ella Irwin, head of trust and safety at Twitter, confirmed several members of the teams were cut but denied they were targeting any of the areas Bloomberg mentioned.
“For example, it made more sense to consolidate teams under one leader (rather than two),” Irwin said in an email response to a request for comment.
She said Twitter axed roles in areas of the company that didn’t have enough “volume” to warrant continued support. However, she said that Twitter has increased staff in its complaints department and that it will continue to have a revenue policy director and an Asia Pacific director for the trust and safety platform.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October and partially funded the deal with nearly $13 billion in debt that resulted in interest repayments of about $1.5 billion a year. He’s since embarked on a frantic mission to overhaul the social media platform, which he said is facing bankruptcy and losing $4 million a day as of early November.
Speaking at a Twitter Spaces event last month, the moody entrepreneur likened the company to “an airplane that’s approaching the ground at high speed with its engines on fire and the controls don’t work.”
Since acquiring the company, Musk has overseen the layoffs or departures of about 5,000 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees and created a “hardcore” work environment for the remaining ones.
Twitter faces multiple lawsuits over unpaid bills, including private charter plane flights, software services and rent at one of its San Francisco offices.
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