Globally,X has reduced its trust and safety staff by 30 per centsince October 2022,with an 80 per cent reduction in trust and safety focused engineers in the same period – staff who are crucial to building and maintaining the platform’s safety infrastructure.
Public policy staff have reduced by 78 per cent globally,while the total number of moderators employed globally by X was slashed by 52 per cent from 107 to 51.
This is the first time X Corp has provided official figures detailing the scale of its staffing reductions since Musk acquired the platform,including specifics on where the cuts were made.
eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the headcount reduction in safety and public policy teams locally,alongside the widespread reinstatement of thousands of previously banned accounts,have created a more toxic and unsafe environment for X’s users.
“You’re creating a perfect storm”,she said. “A number of reinstated users were previously banned for online hate. If you let the worst offenders back on,while at the same time significantly reducing trust and safety personnel whose job it is to protect users from harm,there are clear concerns about the impacts on user safety.”
In Australia,6100 previously banned accounts have been reinstated since October 2022,according to data provided to eSafety by X Corp. This compares to 62,000 globally.