Twitter has slashed more of its workforce associated with the Trust and Safety team overseeing global content moderation, and with the unit handling content related to hate speech and harassment, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The layoffs were conducted Friday night and affected staffers in Twitter’s offices located in Dublin and Singapore. The Bloomberg report, published on Saturday, cited informed sources who requested not to be identified. Those who were laid off include Nur Azhar bin Ayob, head of site integrity for the Asia-Pacific region; and Twitter’s senior director of revenue policy, Analuisa Dominguez, according to Bloomberg.
Several workers associated with teams overseeing policy on misinformation, global appeals and state media were laid off as well.
The cuts were confirmed to Reuters by Twitter’s vice president of Trust and Safety, Ella Irwin.
“We have thousands of people within Trust and Safety who work content moderation and have not made cuts to the teams that do that work daily,” said Irwin, adding that some of the changes were made due to there not being sufficient volume in their respective areas to go forward.
“It made more sense to consolidate teams under one leader (instead of two) for example.”
Twitter, since billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover, continues to make radical changes across the board. The company first came under fire for compromising content moderation when it disbanded the Trust and Safety Council in December, which advised Twitter on a range of sensitive issues, including online safety, suicide prevention, human and digital rights, mental wellbeing, self-harm, dehumanisation, and child sexual exploitation. By November, Twitter had laid off nearly 4,000 employees.
Last month, a lawsuit was filed accusing the firm of unfairly targeting women in layoffs.
Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October after trying to walk away from the proposed deal. He was forced to revive it after Twitter executives took him to court for failing to complete the acquisition. He has since been making the headlines for his erratic decisions and controversial alterations to the troubled social media firm.
