Addressing the concerns of activists and advertisers, Twitter’s head of the safety department said they’re well prepared to tackle potential misinformation during the upcoming elections.
Many have raised concerns about this due to the recent layoffs at Twitter, where half of the workforce was laid off. Yet, Twitter said the content moderation team was the less impacted one, with fewer layoffs than other departments.
Countering Misinformation on Elections
As expected, the new Twitter under Elon Musk’s leadership laid off around 50% of the workforce yesterday. This includes dumping certain employees in several departments and some departments altogether.
NBC News reported that Twitter’s curation team that worked to counter misinformation on the platform was fired entirely! And many of the engineering roles that deal with safety issues were also cut, and some were from the policy and communications.
All these layoffs from critical departments raised concerns about how Twitter would handle the misinformation on its platform, especially at the time of upcoming elections. As activists and advertisers pour in questions, Twitter’s head of safety Yoel Roth came in to defend the allegations.
With early voting underway in the US, our efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority. — Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 4, 2022
