Musk axes Twitter’s outsourced content moderators
Outsourced content moderators employed by social media platform Twitter were the latest group of employees fired by billionaire businessman and CEO Elon Musk.
According to reports, Musk fired contractual moderators over the weekend as part of measures to restructure Twitter’s operations after his takeover.
Twitter and other big social media firms relied heavily on contractors to track hate speech and enforce rules against harmful content. But many of those content watchdogs are left unemployed as Twitter continues firing its full-time and contractual employees.
Melissa Ingle, a contractor for Twitter for more than a year, was one of several contractors who was reportedly terminated last Saturday, November 12. She said she’s concerned there will be increased abuse on Twitter with the number of workers leaving.
“I love the platform and I really enjoyed working at the company and trying to make it better. And I’m just really fearful of what’s going to slip through the cracks,” Ingle stated.
Ingle, a data scientist, worked on the data and monitoring arm of Twitter’s civic integrity team. Her job involved writing algorithms to find political misinformation on the platform in countries such as the U.S., Brazil, Japan, Argentina, and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, content moderation expert and University of California Associate Professor Sarah Roberts said that cutting all content watchdogs will have a “tangible impact on the experience of the platform” in the future.
Twitter hasn’t said how many contract workers it cut. The company hasn’t responded to media requests for information since Musk took over.
