More than a thousand 'safety' workers were let go from Elon Musk's X, watchdog finds

Australian online watchdogs released new data on Thursday showing that Elon Musk’s X has fired over a thousand employees worldwide from teams tasked with removing offensive content from the internet. The “deep cuts” and the reactivation of thousands of banned accounts, according to Australia’s eSafety Commission, have created a “perfect storm” for the spread of harmful content. The regulator has focused heavily on X, formerly known as Twitter, in recent months. Previously, it was stated that a rise in “toxicity and hate” on the platform coincided with Musk’s takeover. The eSafety Commission has acquired a comprehensive list of software engineers, content moderators, and other safety personnel employed by X through the use of Australia’s ground-breaking Online Safety Act. Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, a former Twitter employee, said it was the first time these figures had been made public. They showed 1,213 specialist “trust and safety staff”, including contractors, had left X since it was acquired by Musk in October 2022. This included 80 percent of the software engineers focussed on “trust and safety issues”, said Inman Grant. “To take 80 percent of these specialist engineers away, it would be like Volvo – known for its safety standards – eradicating all of their designers or engineers,” she told AFP. “You’ve got a perfect storm. You’re drastically decreasing your defences, and you’re introducing repeat offenders back onto the platform.” Australia has spearheaded the global push to regulate social media, forcing tech companies to outline how they are tackling issues such as hate speech and child sexual abuse. But attempts to exercise these powers have occasionally been met with indifference. In October last year, the eSafety Commission slapped X with an Aus$610,500 (US$388,000) fine, saying it had failed to show how it was cracking down on child pornography. But X ignored the deadline to pay the fine, before launching ongoing legal action to have it overturned. X did not reply to AFP’s request for comment, instead sending an automated response that read “busy now, please check back later”. (with inputs from AFP)