The layoffs of Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk for social media are obviously not over yet. According to foreign media reports, employees responsible for global content review, and responding to hate speech and harassment have been included in the latest layoff list.
Under Elon Musk’s leadership, Twitter is continuing to shed its trust and safety team, which moderates content globally, while the team responsible for tackling hate speech and harassment has also been affected by layoffs, according to people familiar with the matter.
At least 12 employees in Twitter’s Dublin and Singapore offices were laid off on Friday evening local time in the United States, including Nur Azhar Bin Ayob, Twitter’s head of integrity for Asia Pacific, and Analuisa Domguez, Twitter’s senior director of revenue policy, people familiar with the matter said.
At the same time, the team responsible for handling disinformation policies, global complaints and official media on the Twitter platform has also lost many people.
Ella Irwin, director of trust and safety at Twitter, confirmed that several members of the team she led had been laid off, but she denied some of the information disclosed by so-called people familiar with the matter. “It would make more sense to consolidate the team under one leader, rather than two,” Irving said in an emailed response to a request for comment.
Owen also said that Twitter did make new layoffs in some areas, but this was because these areas did not provide sufficient reasons to prove that it could continue to reasonably obtain the support of the company. She said that Twitter has increased the number of people in the above-mentioned departments and will continue to retain the director responsible for setting revenue policy and responsible for the platform’s trust and safety business in the Asia-Pacific region.
Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October last year, partly funded by nearly $13 billion in debt that requires about $1.5 billion in annual interest payments. Since then, Elon Musk has taken several aggressive steps to overhaul the social media platform. Elon Musk has warned that Twitter is at risk of bankruptcy, with the platform losing $4 million a day as of early November.
In an interview on Twitter Spaces last month, Elon Musk compared Twitter to a plane crashing toward the ground at high speed, with its engines on fire and its controls not working properly. Since taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has laid off about 5,000 of its 7,500 employees and created a so-called “hard-core” work model for those who remain.
Twitter faces lawsuits over multiple unpaid bills, including private charter flights, software services and rent for its San Francisco office.
