Twitter has laid off 50% of its employees, the company’s head of safety and integrity said in a tweet on Friday.
Security and integrity chief Yoel Roth’s tweet was intended to reassure users and advertisers following the company’s takeover by billionaire Elon Musk.
Roth said 15% of Twitter employees on the trust and security team responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation and harmful content have been fired.
Across the company, the layoffs affected 50% of employees, he added in Twitter’s first confirmation of the scale of the layoffs.
Yesterday’s downsizing of around 15% across our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to around 50% cuts companywide), with our frontline moderation staff feeling the least impact.
Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 4, 2022
With the US midterm elections just days away, Roth said fighting harmful disinformation remains a priority.
“Again, to be clear, Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged,” Musk tweeted shortly after Roth’s tweet.
Again, to be absolutely clear, Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.
In fact, this week we’ve even seen hateful speech plummet *below* our previous norms, contrary to what you might read in the press.
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022
Earlier Friday, Musk said Twitter saw “a massive drop in revenue” as civil rights groups raised concerns about how the layoffs would affect moderation and pressured major advertisers to reduce their ad spend.
Big brands like General Mills and General Motors said they stopped advertising on Twitter.
(Reporting by Ann Maria Shibu)