X makes cuts to disinformation and election integrity team
X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has slashed the number of people on its disinformation and election integrity team just weeks after it said it was hiring for new positions to help it guard against foreign interference.
The cuts, first reported by the tech-focused media outlet The Information, included Aaron Rodericks, the head of the team, said a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns about professional consequences.
The person familiar with the cuts said four people had been let go — the entirety of X’s election integrity unit in its Dublin office. It’s unclear how many people remain on the team. […]
The cuts, which were reported on the day of the second Republican presidential primary debate, are part of X’s broader pullback from its efforts to address false information and foreign interference that once ran rampant on the platform. Owner Elon Musk instituted broad layoffs when he took over the company, some of them on its once-sizable “trust and safety” team. […]
Musk has also aggressively criticized the company’s previous moderation efforts, releasing internal documents that he and conservative commentators have claimed showed a liberal bent to how it handled elections and misinformation.
Two shocking details stand out from this story:
One, it’s taken Musk until now to whack most of his integrity team;
Two, he’s not getting rid of it entirely for some reason. But I suspect that’ll change.
The detail that Shitter is cutting back on policing misinformation is, of course, saddening but not exactly shocking as such. I do, however, continue to be amused by the way every news article about X keeps calling it “the platform previously known as Twitter” or something like that… world’s most successful corporate rebrand ever, clearly…
