- Elon Musk fired 50% of 3,700 Twitter employees.
- Most of the company’s safety and disinformation departments were sacked, causing alarm.
- Experts told the media that huge unemployment could promote hate speech and misinformation before the US midterms.
Since taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has faced a maelstrom. After his contentious choices to provide the blue tick to anyone for $8 and to remove nearly 50% of Twitter’s workers, raising safety and disinformation concerns, many have spoken out against him. After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted about the millionaire, they fought. After her Twitter “mentions and notifications conveniently” stopped working after she “[seemed] to have gotten under a certain billionaire’s skin.”
AOC posted about her Twitter account being weird since her tweet “upset” “Musk. “Elon. For the love of decency, get off Twitter, give the keys to someone who does this as a career, and run Tesla and SpaceX. You’re discrediting yourself. Looks bad.”
Musk replied, “Hot take: not everything AOC says is [100 per cent] accurate.”
Hot take: not everything AOC says is 💯 accurate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2022
“Maybe so. That’s why having robust filters for dis/misinformation & credible verified users has been a popular feature for people & advertisers alike. We need those safeguards to make sure it’s accurate information, or the app loses credibility, as do you. And people leave,” Ruffalo said.
Maybe so. That’s why having robust filters for dis/misinformation & credible verified users has been a popular feature for people & advertisers alike. We need those safeguards to make sure it’s accurate information, or the app loses credibility, as do you. And people leave.
— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) November 5, 2022
Experts told the media that huge unemployment could promote hate speech and misinformation before the US midterms.
Elon Musk fired 50% of 3,700 Twitter employees. Most of the company’s safety and disinformation departments were sacked, causing alarm.
Paul Barrett, a New York University disinformation and fake news expert, told the Guardian that this internal instability and abrupt lack of people who fought misinformation had created ideal conditions for electoral misinformation.
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