Twitter Inc has made deeper cuts into its already radically diminished trust and safety team handling global content moderation, as well as to the unit related to hate speech and harassment, people familiar with the matter said.
At least a dozen more cuts on Friday night affected workers in the company’s Dublin and Singapore offices, the sources said, adding that they include Twitter revenue policy senior director Analuisa Dominguez and Nur Azhar Bin Ayob, the company’s head of site integrity for the Asia-Pacific region, a relatively recent hire.
Workers on teams handling the social network’s misinformation policy, global appeals and state media on the platform were also eliminated, the sources said.
Photo: AFP
Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, confirmed that several members of the teams were cut, but denied that they targeted some of those areas.
“It made more sense to consolidate teams under one leader [instead of two] for example,” Irwin said in an e-mailed response to a request for comment.
She said Twitter eliminated roles in areas of the company that did not get enough “volume” to justify continued support.
Photo: Reuters
However, she said that Twitter had since Elon Musk bought the company in October last year increased staffing in its appeals department, and that it would continue to have a head of revenue policy and a head for the platform’s Asia-Pacific region for trust and safety.
Musk bought Twitter for US$44 billion, partly financing the deal with almost US$13 billion of debt that entailed interest repayments of about US$1.5 billion a year. Since taking over the company, Musk has overseen firings or departures of about 5,000 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees and instituted a “hardcore” work environment for those remaining.
Twitter faces multiple lawsuits over unpaid bills, including for private chartered plane flights, software services and rent at one of its San Francisco offices.
Musk has urged a US federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco, saying negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.
In a filing submitted late on Friday — less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin — Musk’s lawyers said it should be moved to the federal court in the Western District of Texas. That district includes the state capital, Austin, which is where Musk relocated his electric vehicle company, Tesla Inc, in late 2021.
The shareholder lawsuit stems from Twitter posts by Musk in August 2018, when he said he had sufficient financing to take Tesla private at US$420 a share — an announcement that caused heavy volatility in Tesla’s share price.
In a victory for the shareholders early last year, US District Judge Edward Chen (鄭一芳) ruled that Musk’s tweets were false and reckless.
If moving the trial is not possible, Musk’s lawyers want it postponed until negative publicity regarding the billionaire’s purchase of Twitter has died down.
However, the shareholders’ attorneys emphasized the last-minute timing of the request, saying that “Musk’s concerns are unfounded and his motion is meritless.”
The filing by Musk’s attorneys also said that Twitter has laid off about 1,000 residents in the San Francisco area since he purchased the company.
Musk has also been criticized by San Francisco’s mayor and other local officials for the job cuts, the filing said.
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