By Sheila Dang
(Reuters) – Twitter has laid off 50% of its employees, the company’s head of security and integrity said in a tweet on Friday, while saying the platform’s content moderation capabilities social media remained in place.
The tweet from security and integrity manager Yoel Roth is intended to reassure users and advertisers following the company’s takeover by billionaire Elon Musk.
Roth said 15% of Twitter employees on the trust and safety team, which is responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation and harmful content, have been terminated. Company-wide, the layoffs affected 50% of employees, he added, which was Twitter’s first confirmation of the extent of the layoffs.
With the U.S. midterm elections just days away, Roth said tackling harmful misinformation remains a top priority.
“Again, to be perfectly clear, Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged,” Musk tweeted shortly after Roth’s own tweet.
Earlier on Friday, Musk said Twitter had experienced “a massive drop in revenue,” due to civil rights groups raising concerns about how the layoffs would affect moderation and lobbying. on major advertisers to reduce their advertising spend.
Major brands like General Mills and General Motors said they had stopped advertising on Twitter.
(Reporting by Ann Maria Shibu in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler)
