After acquiring Twitter (now X), new owner Elon Musk began a massive process of staff reduction. The layoffs impacted practically all departments of the company. However, now X is hiring employees for security, cybersecurity, and content moderation.
In just six months, the staff reduction at X slashed about 6,000 workers. Elon Musk believed that the platform could work with far fewer people. A reduction from 4,062 to 2,849 employees significantly impacted the trust and safety team. Meanwhile, the full-time moderation teams and contracted moderators experienced a reduction from 107 to 51 employees and from 2,613 to 2,305 employees, respectively.
X is hiring staff for security and content moderation departments
Musk’s vision regarding content moderation was more lax than that of the previous management. He has repeated several times that his main goal was to give people back free speech. Musk felt that the previous moderation was stricter on some points of view than others, especially regarding politics.
That said, X was already aware that it would likely need to hire content moderation staff again. The round of layoffs did not come after a specialized analysis that determined exactly the ideal number of employees for each section. In fact, it began very shortly after Elon Musk’s acquisition. In line with that, the company made a major related announcement in January of this year.
A new trust and safety team
X confirmed that it would create a new Trust and Safety center in Austin, Texas. This office would add 100 new full-time content moderators. This new department is likely to receive a significant number of new hires.
The new available jobs go beyond content moderation. The company is also looking for a director of strategic response on X’s safety team and even government affairs managers. The latter could be especially useful in improving X’s relations with certain governments. Recently, Brazilian authorities banned X in the country for allegedly spreading disinformation. In recent times, the EU has also shown a challenging tone towards X. Regarding cybersecurity, there are positions available for engineers and a threat intelligence specialist.
2024-09-10 15:08:38