Election officials, politicians, and even activists were concerned about Twitter's mass layoffs since Elon Musk acquired the company. Especially now that the Midterm Elections are coming next week. But one of the leaders who survived the layoffs stated that there is nothing to worry about on how the platform will run during the elections.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - NOVEMBER 04: Twitter headquarters stands on 10th street on November 4, 2022 in San Francisco, California. Twitter Inc reportedly began laying off employees across its departments on Friday as new owner Elon Musk is reportedly looking to cut around half of the company's workforce. David Odisho/Getty Images
(Photo : David Odisho/Getty Images) SAN FRANCISCO, CA - NOVEMBER 04: Twitter headquarters stands on 10th street on November 4, 2022 in San Francisco, California. Twitter Inc reportedly began laying off employees across its departments on Friday as new owner Elon Musk is reportedly looking to cut around half of the company's workforce.
Election Integrity as Top Priority
After having concerns from people when the company conducted mass layoffs, Twitter Head of Safety Yoel Roth tweeted that election integrity will remain as the company's top priority for the upcoming elections. In a thread, Roth laid out information on where Twitter's Trust & Safety, and moderation capacity stands right now.
Approximately, 50% of its workforce was laid off the company, which affected 15% of the Twitter Trust & Safety organization. As they prepare for the upcoming elections and early voting in the United States is underway, Roth stated that "our efforts on election integrity - including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations - remain a top priority."
Roth also addressed the reports regarding the impact of the layoffs on the platform's security. As per him, the company restricted access to its internal tools to selected users and some of its team. However, the 2,000+ content moderations were not affected by this as they work on the front-line review.
Based on a report from Engadget, these comments from the top safety executive were hours away after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People joined a movement with several activists and civil rights organizations for several advertisers to suspend their relations with Twitter.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson stated that "It is immoral, dangerous, and highly destructive to our democracy for any advertiser to fund a platform that fuels hate speech, election denialism and conspiracy theories."
As of now, Engadget reported that major companies already halted their advertisements on the platform for the past few days, which include GM, Audi, Pfizer, General Mills, Volkswagen, and more.
Elon Musk clarified to the public that downsizing its workforce is a must for the company, which is common for the past months among other tech giants. He stated that the company is losing $4 million per day as they give laid-off employees a three-month advance on their salaries once terminated.
Aside from remaining its top priority for the midterm elections, he also stated on his account that the content moderation policy of the platform will remain unchanged. "In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at this week decline *below* our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press."
