The state of Twitter’s workforce cuts last Friday, four days before the US midterm elections, wreaked havoc on the campaign patterns of Democrats and Republicans, raising concerns for polling offices and staff who relied on men’s skills. of the social network to help them fight violent threats and viral lies.
Indeed, the layoffs practically earthquake the teams of computer technicians in the social network dedicated to combating electoral disinformation, adding other misleading tweets to the normal context in communication with journalists, government officials and campaign workers.
Staff are indispensable especially on this crucial weekend of the midterm elections to “watch for signals of foreign disinformation, spam, and other problematic content around voting”.
But as of Friday morning, Twitter employees’ access to internal tools used to moderate content continued to be somewhat reduced, with employees limiting the ability to respond to current misinformation.
Musk’s cuts led to some companies suspending their ads on the platform (which also reduced social media revenue). Musk’s reassurances about modifying the content were of little help.
Twitter fired about half of the company’s workforce on Friday, a decision Musk said was needed to cut costs.
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