Twitter is struggling to respond to political misinformation and other harmful posts on the social media platform after Elon Musk fired roughly half of its workforce just days before the U.S. midterm elections, according to employees who survived the cuts and an outside voting rights group.
The recent mass layoffs spared many of the people whose job it is to keep hate and misinformation off the social-media platform. Musk cut just 15% of those frontline content-moderation workers, compared to roughly 50% job cuts companywide, an executive said last week.
But in preparation for the layoffs, employees said the company also sharply reduced how many employees can look into a specific account's digital history and behavior — a practice necessary to investigate if it’s been used maliciously and take action to suspend it. The company said it froze access to those tools to reduce “insider risk” at a time of transition.
