Elon Musk is hiring moderators to police X for child pornography ahead of a Senate hearing on protecting children online after he shed 1,200 ‘trust and safety’ specialists during his Twitter takeover.
Social media company X (formerly known as Twitter) is planning to employ 100 new workers to monitor the website for child abuse-related content.
The Musk-owned social networking site will create a new ‘Trust and Safety center of excellence’ in Austin, Texas, where the new moderating team will work from.
X was recently exposed by an n online safety commissioner, eSafety, for axing 80 per cent of its safety engineers since Musk took over the company in 2022.
The decision to hire 100 employees for the new safety team comes ahead of a Senate hearing on protecting children online that will take place on January 31, 2024.
Elon Musk is hiring moderators to police X for child pornography ahead of a Senate hearing on protecting children online after he shed 1,200 ‘trust and safety’ specialists during his Twitter takeover
Social media company X (formerly known as Twitter) is planning to employ 100 new workers to monitor the website for child abuse-related content
The eSafety Commission obtained a detailed breakdown of software engineers using ‘s groundbreaking Online Safety Act and found that 1,213 specialist ‘trust and safety staff’, including contractors, had left X since it was acquired by Musk.
‘s eSafety commissioner Julia Inman Grant, who formerly worked at Twitter, said it was the first time these shocking figures were revealed.
‘To take 80 percent of these specialist engineers away, it would be like Volvo — known for its safety standards — eradicating all of their designers or engineers,’ Inman Grant told AFP.
‘You’ve got a perfect storm. You’re drastically decreasing your defences, and you’re introducing repeat offenders back onto the platform,’ she said.
has spearheaded the global push to regulate social media, forcing tech companies to outline how they are tackling issues such as hate speech and child sexual abuse.
In October last year, the eSafety Commission slapped X with an Aus$610,500 (US$388,000) fine, saying it had failed to show how it was cracking down on child pornography.
But X ignored the deadline to pay the fine, before launching ongoing legal action to have it overturned.
However, X have now made the decision to hire more content moderators right before the U.S. Senate hearing that is expected to grill CEOs of X, Meta Platforms, Snap, TikTok and Discord on child sexual exploitation online.
In a blog post on Friday, X said it suspended 12.4 million accounts last year for violating its rules against child sexual exploitation.
This is a dramatic increase from the 2.3 million account suspensions in 2022.
X have made the decision to hire more content moderators right before a U.S. Senate hearing that is expected to grill CEOs of X and other social media platforms on child safety online
The Musk-owned social networking site will create a new ‘Trust and Safety center of excellence’ in Austin, Texas, where the new moderating team will work from. The current X HQ (pictured) is in San Francisco
Musk has faced previous backlash for trying to minimize moderation on the social media site
Members of the public were quick to call X out for firing the moderators in the first place in light of new hiring plans.
‘Guess a lot of those people that got fired for not doing thing were actually doing something,’ a user on Reddit commented on the news.
‘So basically…announce this, mention it during the hearings, and then never actually stand it up afterwards, but continue to mention how they plan to use it when questioned by media,’ another said.
Musk has faced previous backlash for trying to minimize moderation on the social media site.
The X owner tried to prevent a California law that regulates online content moderation which would require social media companies to reveal moderating information in detailed annual reports.
X faced controversy last week after explicit AI-generated pictures of popstar Taylor Swift were shared on the website.
In a dramatic move, X blocked any searches for Taylor Swift’s name in the fallout from the pictures.
The dozens of graphic images were originally uploaded to Celeb Jihad and showed Swift in a series of sexual acts while dressed in Kansas City Chief memorabilia and in the stadium.
One image of Swift shared on X was viewed 47 million times before the account was suspended, according to a New York Times report. The company was widely criticized for its seemingly slow response to the emergence of the pictures, eventually suspending the account where they originated