The Australian E-safety Commission reported on Thursday that X Corp, formally Twitter, has laid off over 30 percent of its trust and safety staff. The organisation tasked with overseeing the internet safety of people in Australia reported that under new owner Elon Musk’s efforts to cut costs at the company, a significant amount of staff had been removed, including over 80 percent of X’s safety engineers. These staff members are normally tasked with making sure that X is a platform where hackers cannot easily exploit other users.
These engineers are also in charge of policing hate-based behaviour on the platform. The watchdog states that over the period since Mr musk took over the platform, there has been a sizable increase in the number of people reporting hate speech on the platform. However, the number of people who have been banned for such activity has decreased.
The report also had other notable findings, including a 45 percent reduction in trust and safety staff in the Asia Pacific region and a 100 percent reduction in the number of Australian-based staff. This also goes hand in hand with a June 2023 legal challenge to the terms and conditions of X under the Online Safety Act in Australia. The watchdog was unconvinced that X was doing enough to meet the minimum safety standards expectations set out by the law. Updates to this legal challenge are ongoing.
