Twitter Inc has made deeper cuts into its already radically diminished trust and safety team handling global content moderation, as well as to the unit related to hate speech and harassment, people familiar with the matter said.
At least a dozen more cuts on Friday night affected workers in the company’s Dublin and Singapore offices, the sources said, adding that they include Twitter revenue policy senior director Analuisa Dominguez and Nur Azhar Bin Ayob, the company’s head of site integrity for the Asia-Pacific region, a relatively recent hire.
Workers on teams handling the social network’s misinformation policy, global appeals and state media on the platform were also eliminated, the sources said.
Photo: AFP
Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, confirmed that several members of the teams were cut, but denied that they targeted some of those areas.
“It made more sense to consolidate teams under one leader [instead of two] for example,” Irwin said in an e-mailed response to a request for comment.
She said Twitter eliminated roles in areas of the company that did not get enough “volume” to justify continued support.
Photo: Reuters
However, she said that Twitter had since Elon Musk bought the company in October last year increased staffing in its appeals department, and that it would continue to have a head of revenue policy and a head for the platform’s Asia-Pacific region for trust and safety.
Musk bought Twitter for US$44 billion, partly financing the deal with almost US$13 billion of debt that entailed interest repayments of about US$1.5 billion a year. Since taking over the company, Musk has overseen firings or departures of about 5,000 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees and instituted a “hardcore” work environment for those remaining.
Twitter faces multiple lawsuits over unpaid bills, including for private chartered plane flights, software services and rent at one of its San Francisco offices.
Musk has urged a US federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco, saying negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.
In a filing submitted late on Friday — less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin — Musk’s lawyers said it should be moved to the federal court in the Western District of Texas. That district includes the state capital, Austin, which is where Musk relocated his electric vehicle company, Tesla Inc, in late 2021.
The shareholder lawsuit stems from Twitter posts by Musk in August 2018, when he said he had sufficient financing to take Tesla private at US$420 a share — an announcement that caused heavy volatility in Tesla’s share price.
In a victory for the shareholders early last year, US District Judge Edward Chen (鄭一芳) ruled that Musk’s tweets were false and reckless.
If moving the trial is not possible, Musk’s lawyers want it postponed until negative publicity regarding the billionaire’s purchase of Twitter has died down.
However, the shareholders’ attorneys emphasized the last-minute timing of the request, saying that “Musk’s concerns are unfounded and his motion is meritless.”
The filing by Musk’s attorneys also said that Twitter has laid off about 1,000 residents in the San Francisco area since he purchased the company.
Musk has also been criticized by San Francisco’s mayor and other local officials for the job cuts, the filing said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he