Twitter leaks: Laid-back employees are now struggling to keep misinformation at bay World news

Twitter is struggling to respond to political and other harmful posts on the social media site after Elon Musk fired roughly half of his staff just days before the US midterm elections, according to employees who survived the cuts. and external franchises.

Recent mass media attacks have derailed many people whose job it is to keep hate and misinformation off the social media platform. Musk cut just 15% of front-line content editing staff, compared to roughly 50% job cuts across the company, an executive said last week.

But in preparation for the releases, officials say the company is still very limited in how many employees can look into specific digital history and behavior — a necessary step to investigate if it has been used maliciously and action to stop. The company said it is freezing access to those tools to reduce “internal risk” during the transition.

The developments are causing concern as the US midterm elections conclude on Tuesday. Although millions of Americans have already cast early and absentee ballots, millions more are expected to go to the polls to vote in person. Election watchers fear that the platform may not be equipped to handle hate speech, false information that may affect the safety and security of voters, and actors seeking to cast doubt on the legitimate winners of elections around the country .

Investigators are following up on the misinformation before the central government notified Twitter on Friday about three posts from well-known far-right figures that advanced claims about election fraud. Posts come three days later. When Common Cause asked Twitter for an update on Monday, the platform said the posts were “under review.”

Before Musk agreed, Twitter responded much more quickly, Jesse Littlewood, vice president for campaigns at Common Cause. The group said they had been in constant communication with Twitter staff before Musk took over. Now, they are getting a response from a generic email address.

“We’ve been getting much faster decisions from them, sometimes within hours,” Littlewood said. Now, he said, “It’s like pushing the button for a walk sign at a stop light, and nothing happens.”

Musk gutted teams working on marketing, communications and editorial editing of what people see on Twitter. But his decision to retain most of Twitter’s content moderation team came as a welcome surprise to some inside and outside the company. Musk, then, promised to let free speech flourish by loosening Twitter’s content restrictions and reinstating accounts banned for violating those rules. It has also pledged to end the current user authentication program in favor of a $7.99 subscription fee.

But the fact that the content moderation group survives may mean that important non-violent activities such as the prohibition of the motivations of political violence will continue, and some of the worst scenarios around the information of electoral malfeasance will not be implemented. Some of Musk’s tweets have been commented with a fact-checked status in recent days.

The two employees who survived the job reduced the credit of former junior executive Yoel Roth, Twitter’s global head of security and integrity, for increasing his team’s importance to Musk’s goals for Twitter while avoiding potential moves. angry at Tesla’s mercurial CEO.

“Only Yoel Roth saved the company,” said a Twitter employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because of job security concerns. “On the part of the public, it is fair and reasonable to deal with Elon Musk in a way that is not submissive, but persistent, because Elon is the king.”

Roth has become the public face of Twitter’s content moderation since Musk took office and has consistently defended Twitter’s ongoing efforts to fight misinformation. Musk, a prolific tweeter with more than 110 million followers, has often pointed to Roth’s Twitter feed as the most reliable account of the company’s commitment to sustainability standards. And the billionaire, who believes that past Twitter management has pushed right-wing views, defended Roth when Musk’s devout supporters asked for his firing over past comments they felt showed Roth’s liberal bias.

Roth, who once worked at an Apple store fixing Mac computers, joined Twitter in 2015 after spending a year writing about online hate speech at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for the Internet and Social, according to your LinkedIn profile. In June, he assumed the senior role “responsible for all user, content, and security policies, involving more than 120 policymakers, threat researchers, data analysts, and operations specialists.”

Roth did not respond to requests for comment.

A legal scholar who sits on Twitter’s Trust and Safety Committee, an advisory board set up in 2016, said he has long been impressed with Roth’s candor about the challenges of content moderation and the nuances of free speech — such as importance of blocking crazy content. to allow the freedom of speech of women and others more likely to be victimized on the Internet.

“If Musk had been able to cut everyone off the balance sheet and just replace him with his ‘yes’ men, he probably would have,” said Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami. and president of the Cyber ​​Civil Rights Initiative The only reason he didn’t do it was because he knew it would make Twitter inactive.”

A Twitter official said Monday that founders are actively looking for new jobs in part because of Musk’s lack of commitment to keeping the platform free of hate speech and misinformation. Speaking anonymously due to concerns about job security, the employee said the job cuts would make Twitter staff less effective in following up and running on excuses about election-related backlash, as they include people leading the a stable group of citizens.

Franks said there is always a tension between Twitter and other social media companies between making money and protecting democracy and freedom of expression. He said that’s only getting harder under Musk, who has shown that Twitter can act quickly in banning a comedian who mocked him by impersonating his account, but has otherwise expressed disdain for Twitter’s abuse standards.

“I would imagine that someone in a position like Roth’s at Twitter would have to play a very delicate game and try not to walk any wires, not to draw backlash from Musk because he’s incredibly thin-skinned, ” said Franks.