It's been almost two years since Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now X), after which the Tesla CEO laid off around 80% of his staff.
These cuts included reducing the “trust and safety” team from 4,026 to 2,849, and reducing the number of full-time moderators from 107 to just 51.
Now, it appears X is hiring again, as two dozen jobs have been posted on its careers site for both cybersecurity and security positions.
Band-Aid over a Bullet Hole
The listings mention several locations for the new roles, with major U.S. tech hubs like New York City and Palo Alto, California, included alongside X’s international offices in Manila, Philippines, and Delhi, India.
X announced in January 2024 that it would create a new Trust and Safety center in its Austin, Texas, office that would house 100 full-time content moderators, and those roles appear to be included as well.
Of course, there is still a very significant shortfall from 2022 staffing levels, but the move points to a fairly significant symbolic defeat for Musk, who I bought the platform in 2022 to “protect free speech,” but instead it has arguably ushered in an era of virtually unrestricted content.
Unsurprisingly, this got X into trouble, as the platform recently shut down in Brazil after… refuse to ban accounts that spread disinformation and hate speech, though Musk insisted it was political censorship. In the same vein, nearly half of all advertisers left the site and X lost nearly $500 million in the first quarter of 2023.
While the moderation staff is likely to be a very welcome measure, it's hard to imagine that a few more staff would mitigate the “freedom for all” philosophy introduced by Musk. As for security, X is looking for threat intelligence specialists and security engineers to help protect the site.
In recent times, X has had issues with privacy and security, as well as errors and failures – It got worse with the loss of staff. Quality control testing (or lack thereof) seems to have led to multiple issues, including the disruption of external links.
At a time of uncertainty for the platform, many users will be hoping Musk makes some bold changes to make the site safer, and this hiring spree could be a step in the right direction.
Through TechnologyCrunch
