Elon Musk, the proprietor of X (formerly Twitter), In a recent statement, revealed that he had terminated several employees from the platform’s election integrity team in anticipation of important upcoming elections worldwide.
‘Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone,’ Musk wrote in a post on Wednesday, in response to a report in The Information.
The online publication revealed that X plans to reduce its global workforce dedicated to overseeing and preventing disinformation and fraud during major elections by 50%.
Next year, the global calendar is set to feature over 50 major elections, including the US presidential election, as well as key contests in India, Africa, and the European Union.
EU regulators discovered that X had the largest portion of disinformation among the major social networks scrutinised in an analysis conducted by Brussels, and the cut followed shortly after.
Tech firms are now required to improve content monitoring under a new EU regulation, aimed at shielding European users from disinformation and hate speech; companies that fail to comply may be subject to fines.
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The recent workforce reductions appear to be at odds with the recent remarks by X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who stated to the Financial Times this week that the platform was in the process of expanding its teams worldwide ahead of the busy election season.
When questioned about the report in a different interview at the Vox Code Conference on Wednesday, Yaccarino said election integrity was ‘an issue we take very seriously.’
‘Contrary to the comments that were made, there is a robust and growing team at X that is wrapping their arms around election integrity,’ she added.
In her discussion, Yaccarino further stated that X would turn a profit early next year.
She also declined confirming that X would commence charging its users a fee, noting that it was an “idea” and not a plan.
While discussing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Musk highlighted that the introduction of a “small monthly subscription” for X was the only viable solution to tackle the large number of automated accounts, commonly referred to as bots, on the platform.