Twitter’s content moderators are being laid off by the company, weeks
after Elon Musk fired half of the company’s regular workforce. Like other big social media firms, Twitter has also relied heavily on contractors to track hate and enforce rules against harmful content. Twitter is said to have eliminated an untold number of contract jobs over the weekend, and the move comes after the first round of layoffs on November 4.
Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk is further gutting the teams that battle misinformation on the social media platform as outsourced moderators learned over the weekend they were out of a job.
Twitter and other big social media firms have relied heavily on contractors to track hate and enforce rules against harmful content.
But many of those content watchdogs have now headed out the door, first when Twitter fired much of its full-time workforce by email on November 4 and now as it moves to eliminate an untold number of contract jobs.
Melissa Ingle, who worked at Twitter as a contractor for more than a year, was one of a number of contractors who said they were terminated Saturday. She said she’s concerned that there’s going to be an increase in abuse on Twitter with the number of workers leaving.
“I love the platform and I really enjoyed working at the company and trying to make it better.
