SYDNEY – Billionaire Elon Musk’s X has shed more than 1,000 staff globally from teams responsible for stopping abusive content online, according to new figures released on Jan 11 by Australia’s online watchdog.
Australia’s eSafety Commission said these “deep cuts” and the reinstatement of thousands of banned accounts had created a “perfect storm” for the spread of harmful content.
The regulator has, in recent months, zeroed in on X – formerly known as Twitter – previously saying that Mr Musk’s takeover coincided with a spike in “toxicity and hate” on the platform.
Using Australia’s ground-breaking Online Safety Act, the eSafety Commission has obtained a detailed breakdown of software engineers, content moderators and other safety staff working at X.
Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, a former Twitter employee, said it was the first time these figures had been made public.
They showed that 1,213 specialist “trust and safety staff”, including contractors, had left X since it was acquired by Mr Musk in October 2022.
Ms Inman Grant said this included 80 per cent of the software engineers focused on “trust and safety issues”.
“To take 80 per cent of these specialist engineers away, it would be like Volvo – known for its safety standards – eradicating all of their designers or engineers,” she told AFP.
“You’ve got a perfect storm. You’re drastically decreasing your defences, and you’re introducing repeat offenders back onto the platform.”
Australia has spearheaded the global push to regulate social media, forcing tech companies to outline how they are tackling issues such as hate speech and child sexual abuse.
But attempts to exercise these powers have occasionally been met with indifference.
In October 2023, the eSafety Commission fined X A$610,500 (S$544,870), saying it had failed to show how it was cracking down on child pornography.
But X ignored the deadline to pay the fine, before launching ongoing legal action to have it overturned.
X did not reply to AFP’s request for comment, and instead sent an automated response that read “busy now, please check back later”. AFP
