Elon Musk's X tells watchdog it has shed 1,000 'safety' staff
SYDNEY: Elon Musk's X has shed morethan 1,000 staff globally from teams responsible for stopping abusive contentonline, according to new figures released Thursday by Australia's onlinewatchdog.
LONDON: X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk attends a conversation event with Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London.—AFP.
Australia's eSafetyCommission said these "deep cuts" and the reinstatement of thousandsof banned accounts had created a "perfect storm" for the spread ofharmful content.
The regulator hasin recent months zeroed in on X -- formerly known as Twitter -- previouslysaying Musk's takeover coincided with a spike in "toxicity and hate"on the platform.
Using Australia'sgroundbreaking Online Safety Act, the eSafety Commission has obtained adetailed breakdown of software engineers, content moderators and other safetystaff working at X.
Commissioner JulieInman Grant, a former Twitter employee, said it was the first time thesefigures had been made public.
They showed 1,213specialist "trust and safety staff", including contractors, had leftX since it was acquired by Musk in October 2022.
This included 80percent of the software engineers focussed on "trust and safetyissues", said Inman Grant.
"To take 80percent of these specialist engineers away, it would be like Volvo -- known forits safety standards -- eradicating all of their designers or engineers,"she told AFP.
"You've got aperfect storm. You're drastically decreasing your defences, and you'reintroducing repeat offenders back onto the platform."
Australia hasspearheaded the global push to regulate social media, forcing tech companies tooutline how they are tackling issues such as hate speech and child sexualabuse.
But attempts toexercise these powers have occasionally been met with indifference.
In October lastyear, the eSafety Commission slapped X with an Aus$610,500 (US$388,000) fine,saying it had failed to show how it was cracking down on child pornography.
But X ignored thedeadline to pay the fine, before launching ongoing legal action to have itoverturned.
X did not reply toAFP's request for comment, instead sending an automated response that read"busy now, please check back later".—AFP.
