Since taking ownership of X, formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk has made major changes to the social media platform. Most recently, Mr. Musk made significant staffing cuts to the disinformation and election integrity team.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Musk fired four people in the Dublin office, comprising the entire election integrity team in that office. It isn’t clear how many total employees remain on the team. Musk commented via X on the downsizing, suggesting the election integrity was doing the exact opposite of its intended purpose. “Oh you mean the “Election Integrity” Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone,” Mr. Musk said in response to news coverage of the event.
Oh you mean the “Election Integrity” Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 27, 2023
According to a recent blog post from X titled “Supporting people’s right to accurate and safe political discourse on X” the company is actively looking to expand its safety and elections teams to prevent manipulation and inauthentic accounts. According to the post:
We have rules in place to help protect the safety and authenticity of conversations on X. During elections, our Civic Integrity Policy provides an extra layer of protection that is applied for a limited period of time before and during an election. We’re updating this policy to make sure we strike the right balance between tackling the most harmful types of content—those that could intimidate or deceive people into surrendering their right to participate in a civic process—and not censoring political debate.
When Elon Musk took the reigns of Twitter late last year, he enacted vast structural changes to the company. The new CEO fired thousands of employees, gutting many of the existing teams within the organization.
According to reports, Musk had laid off roughly 80 percent of Twitter employees, reducing the 6,500 employees to around 2,000. Musk pointed out that maintaining Twitter’s operations did not require the “oversaturated” levels of staffing it had.
“Turns out, you don’t need all that many people to run Twitter,” he said. “I mean, if you’re not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization, and you don’t care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people it turns out.”
The American Tribune reported late last year that Elon Musk’s investment in Twitter, now X, would reach “cash flow break-even” sometime this year. These projections were based on the mass firings and extreme spending cuts.
However, the woke mob has railed against Musk’s ambitions to create a true free-speech platform. The platform has endured accusations of promoting a toxic environment of “hate speech” and “disinformation.” Musk’s latest move with the election integrity team has certainly fueled further slandering.
“Since taking charge of X, Elon Musk has used the platform to foment antisemitism, hate speech, and disinformation — playing into the hands of bad actors like Russia, China, and Iran,” Kyle Morse, the deputy executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, complained. “Decimating their election integrity team — on top of last year’s firings — means that X will continue to be a toxic hellscape that people and advertisers should avoid.”
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