X reportedly starts hiring new people for security and content moderation teams

When Elon Musk first acquired X (at the time it was called Twitter), he began a massive staff reduction process and the layoffs impacted all departments of the company. However, now, a couple of years later, X is hiring employees to work for security, cybersecurity, and content moderation on the social media platform. Back in the day, when Elon Musk started laying off X employees, the company let go of around 6,000 people. The billionaire believed fewer people were necessary for the company to work. A reduction from reportedly 4,062 to 2,849 employees impacted the trust and safety team.

Reportedly, content moderation teams saw a reduction from 107 to 51 employees (for the full-time moderation teams), while contracted moderators reportedly went down from 2,613 to 2,305 people.

Musk apparently considered that less content moderation was needed than what Twitter’s previous manager had needed. The billionaire stated many times that his main goal was to give people back free speech on the social media platform.

However, X was reportedly aware that it needed to hire content moderation staff again. The layoffs weren’t coming from a specialized analysis of how many people were ideal to deal with the tasks that the social media company faced in terms of moderation. So, hiring back people began shortly after the layoffs.

X confirmed there will be a new Trust and Safety center based in Austin, Texas. The office would add 100 new full-time content moderators. There are other available jobs beyond content moderation too. The company is looking for a director of strategic response on X’s safety team and even government affairs managers.

The latter is essential given the fact that X has had its fair share of disagreements with governments, including getting banned in Brazil for allegedly spreading disinformation.

Safety and security online are getting more and more important. I believe conserving free speech should remain a top priority, but at the same time, one cannot go without content moderation, especially on such a big social media platform as X. Having a new dedicated team to ensure safety is a great idea, in my opinion.