X Corp. has slashed 30% of trust and safety staff, an Australian online safety watchdog says

By ROD McGUIRK
Associated Press

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia’s online safety watchdog says the owner of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter has slashed its global trust and safety staff by 30% including an 80% reduction in the number of safety engineers since billionaire Elon Musk took over in 2022. Australia’s eSafety Commission released summaries on Thursday of answers provided by X Corp. to questions about how its policies about hateful conduct are enforced. The commission says while X has previously given estimates of the reduction in staffing, the answers were the first specific figures on where staff reductions had been made to become public. X’s responses to user reports of hateful content also had slowed since Musk took over, with thousands of previously banned accounts reinstated.