Cyber experts warn of Twitter misinformation risk on eve of US election
Elon Musk faces a test of how to manage misinformation and hate speech on Twitter as the US votes in midterm elections just days after the billionaire sacked staff who policed user content.
Critics had already raised concerns about Musk’s plans to loosen content moderation at his newly acquired social media site when he began implementing a plan to sack half of Twitter’s 7,500-strong workforce, including members of the “trust and safety” team.
Then on Saturday, Twitter said in updates to its app on the Apple App Store that it was launching a new subscription service in some jurisdictions including the US and UK, charging users $7.99 a month for a product that would include “Blue Tick” verifications. “Trash me all day, but it’ll cost $8,” Musk posted on Twitter from his own verified account.
The moves come ahead of elections on Tuesday that will decide control of Congress.
Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, faces a string of challenges as he attempts to overhaul Twitter’s business model, including looming $1bn annual interest payments on its $13bn of debt, litigation from ex-staff and a potential legal fight with former executives.
Major brands have also paused advertising on the platform over fears that Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist”, would weaken content moderation.
That has put a spotlight on Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of trust and safety and one of the few senior executives from its previous management still in place. Roth said in a tweet on Friday that the job cuts affected about 15 per cent of the trust and safety team “with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact”. He added: “Our core moderation capabilities remain in place.”
However, Chris Krebs, former director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a unit of the Department for Homeland Security, said in a tweet over the weekend that the new subscription model for verified profiles, part of Musk’s “Twitter Blue” product rollout, was a “major risk” on the cusp of the election, during which the “source of information is critical”.
He described the new model for verifying users’ identities as Twitter “taking their $ & their word for it”.
Edward Perez, a former director of product management at Twitter whose team focused on the site’s coverage of elections, said in a tweet that the verification scheme was “a clash between moneymaking & validating authenticity . . . Rushing this out days before election day is a bad idea.”
Responding to concerns over the verification system, Musk said on Sunday that “any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended”.
He added: “Previously, we issued a warning before suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning. This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue.”
On Sunday, The New York Times quoted sources as saying that Twitter would delay the rollout of the new verification system until the day after the election. A spokesperson for Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk hinted at further reforms for Twitter users over the weekend, including changing the site’s search function; adding an ability to attach long-form text to tweets, which have been capped at 240-characters; and introducing “creator monetisation”, which could allow users with large numbers of followers to earn money from their content.
However, he faces a battle to persuade large brands such as General Motors, Mondelez, Carlsberg, Volkswagen and General Mills to resume advertising on Twitter, which relies on adverts for the bulk of its revenue, after the companies put marketing on the site on hold over concerns about content moderation.
Musk will also have to mitigate the fallout of his cull of roughly half of the company’s workforce as he attempts to shore up Twitter’s finances to meet $1bn in annual interest payments on the debt that helped him fund the $44bn acquisition of the business.
Those who were laid off received an email to their personal email address and had their access to their company email and Slack channels revoked.
“Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” Musk wrote on the platform.
Those who remained were sent a message to the corporate email to say they were “not impacted by [the] workforce reduction”. While the precise wording of these varied by geography, staffers were told that Musk had been busy meeting employees, users, policymakers and partners, and that he would soon be communicating his “vision” to them.
Most teams, such as policy, were roughly halved, according to people familiar with the situation. Others, including communications, human rights and the machine-learning ethics team, were all but sacked, former staffers said, with only a handful of employees remaining.
Five former employees filed a class-action lawsuit against Twitter in the San Francisco federal court late last week, alleging they had not been given enough notice under federal and California law that they had lost their jobs as part of the lay-offs.
Musk could also face litigation after he terminated contracts with several top executives, including Parag Agrawal, chief executive officer, and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal, policy and trust, “for cause”, two people familiar with the situation said, meaning he claimed to have a valid legal justification for doing so and therefore the payouts may be voided.