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Twitter layoffs gutted election information teams days before midterms
- simondotau 4y agoAccording to Yoel Roth, the Trust & Safety organization within Twitter was mostly unaffected by these layoffs. The team size was reduced by just 15%[1] and the amount of moderation activity is largely unchanged[2]. Roth says that their "efforts on election integrity – including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations – remain a top priority." [3] [1] https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1588657228462317568 https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1588657228462317568 [2] https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1588657230836305920 https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1588657230836305920 [3] https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1588657232279130112 https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1588657232279130112
- justapassenger 4y agoCalling 15% layoff something not affecting an org is only a somewhat honest statement if compared with a bonkers 50% layoffs across the company.
- Natsu 4y agoI dunno, they're obviously still engaged and working. I mean, this article is just a few positions down on the HN frontpage: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/02/white-house-twitter-context-note-00064647 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/02/white-house-twitter...
- rogerkirkness 4y agoMore than 15% of time in big ops orgs goes to hiring so if they aren't hiring they don't need all that slack in the system to be able to do the same work output.
- justapassenger 4y agoIf your estimate is correct - they haven’t been hiring for a while, while experiencing normal attrition.
- waynesonfire 4y agowas it the guy that checkout out three years ago and two managers?
- TheRealDunkirk 4y agoBut is it "gutting?" No. And companies very frequently cut 10-15%, just to shore up the bottom line, to prepare for a bad quarter. I work for a company that is FAMOUS for binge-and-purge hiring practices. They shed that every couple of years, and have for three decades.
- simondotau 4y agoThat's a great way of ensuring your company has a very high proportion of resilient cockroaches.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y agoAnd I would stipulate to that.
- mjfl 4y agoVery good. We wouldn't want to go an election without the assistance of a Ministry of Truth.
- Quillbert182 4y agoDon’t you mean… doubleplusgood?
- taurath 4y agoThis is hyperbolic in the extreme - the only things I've seen on the election information is tagging conspiracy theories for which there is no evidence, or noting that videos going viral are faked. Every time I see people advocate for less moderation its really freedom to lie through their damn teeth.
- MilnerRoute 4y agoThe Post's article acknowledges Roth's tweet -- but that "Trust & Safety organization" seems like a different organization than the election information team that "has worked for years to counter election-related falsehoods." "As recently as two weeks ago, Twitter was touting the team’s debunking efforts as a key aspect of its approach to the 2022 midterms. But on Friday, multiple Twitter employees told The Washington Post the entire team appeared to have been cut amid Musk’s layoffs."
- hnfong 4y ago> Every time I see people advocate for less moderation its really freedom to lie through their damn teeth. The freedom to publish statements that the establishment (aka Ministry of Truth) deems as false. It's also called lying. You might think it's obvious what's true and false, but if that's the case you clearly haven't done enough philosophy...
- taurath 4y agoI think it is objectively obvious, most of the time, when a video is doctored or a false statement is presented as fact. I'd rather not live in a place where absolutely nothing is real. Societies crumble under such a culture. Birds are considered real only because its not politically advantageous to believe they aren't real. What a dumb fucking value system to live under.
- throw2022110401 4y agoFrom the linked thread: > Most of the 2,000+ content moderators working on front-line review were not impacted, and access will be fully restored in the coming days. An implication here is that engineering was hit that much harder. (Assuming that "most of" doesn't mean "50% + 1")
- MAGZine 4y agoDid you RTFA? Roth was directly quoted by the post. > In October 2020, ahead of the U.S. presidential election, the team added context to all trends that could be found in Twitter’s prime real estate — its “For you” and “What’s happening” boxes — on its app and website. As recently as two weeks ago, Twitter was touting the team’s debunking efforts as a key aspect of its approach to the 2022 midterms. > But on Friday, multiple Twitter employees told The Washington Post the entire team appeared to have been cut amid Musk’s layoffs. It's hard to know where exactly the cuts were made inside of the trust and safety org, and even how twitter is laid out internally to know whether (or how) if trust and safety intersects with departments paying attention to information ops. anecdotally, i've seen at least a few people working in those areas laid off.
- simondotau 4y agoAt this moment I see no reason to consider The Washington Post a more credible source than a Twitter employee whose name is known.
- MAGZine 4y agoI'm not sure what point you're making. The whole point in either case is that what is being reported is accurate and verified. I think Twitter moderation these days is pretty transparent and fact-based when they take action.
- simondotau 4y agoThe point I'm making is to question whether we should take the Washington Post article more seriously than direct statements from named employees. The article is making assertions based on claims made by anonymous people who claim to be Twitter employees, and that either through malice or stupidity or "telephone" style information loss, there are countless ways that this article can end up being wrong. And precisely to your earlier point, the article encourages the reader to fill in the blanks about what various departments existed, what their roles are, whether they have direct, indirect, or no effects on the material on Twitter. There is nothing accurate nor verified about any of that. It's all intentionally hazy, and contributes to the article's overt desire to push a specific narrative rather than provide clarity.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- chitowneats 4y agoConsidering these are the teams that put their thumbs on the scale during the 2020 election by censoring the New York Post, I'm not sure much has been lost here. They later reversed the decision long after the election when they could no longer deny they censored the truth. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/technology/twitter-new-york-post.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/technology/twitter-new-yo...
- px43 4y ago
- ethanbond 4y agoSeems like a poor approach to just throw out a system based on a fault case (or two, or ten, or at Twitter’s scale, immense amounts of iffy and bad corner cases).
- chitowneats 4y agoSeems important that there would be some sort of reform when there has been no mea culpa whatsoever by the perpetrators. Quietly issuing a reversal 6 months after the election does not count. Maybe I'm just not aware, but was there an official change in policy after this debacle? I assume it remained business as usual at Twitter until about a week ago.
- ethanbond 4y agoWhat would have been an appropriate mea culpa in your view?
- perfecthjrjth 4y agoName and shame, and fire them. That's the best approach in these kind of issues.
- pcwalton 4y ago
- simondotau 4y agoPerhaps more controversially is the reminder that Washington Post and Twitter are just two large media organisations privately owned by billionaires. And it's no secret that Bezos and Musk are not friends.
- bruceb 4y agoExactly. MSNBC was complaining about twitter a few hours ago, saying very bad things could happen. Embarrassing the level of fear mongering going on. Update to my comment. Found it: https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1588572920066240512 https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1588572920066240512 (Cernovich can have bad faith takes, but the video speaks for itself)
- 3327 4y ago
- encryptluks2 4y agoCan have bad takes? You're talking about a Q-based conspiracy theorist that promoted pizza gate.
- rjzzleep 4y ago"The website is built on sticks, it might fall apart" - if all those billions poured into engineering built a near real time messaging platform that will fall apart when a few people change hands, I'd go on a firing spree as well. I remember full well when I was at a startup and the principal engineer pulled me aside and said: "you have been poking around everywhere and you have identified problems. I want you to stop talking about them otherwise the whole thing will fall apart". As a leader, that is your immediate cue to silently work on transitioning that person out of the company and build cement where he put sticks. EDIT: This whole commentary is really weird. Normally you publish this sort of information, if you feel like there is no one at the company that is willing to address such issues. But there has just been a leadership change and the leadership has hinted at wanting to address exactly these sort of issues. But assuming that the commentary is correct, to keep it private, to protect incompetent leadership and then publish it in hopes that the government steps in, to specifically NOT address these issues, is a logic that I can't really wrap my head around.
- ch4s3 4y agoWho really cares. The top number of mDAUs on twitter in the US is 41 million, and 42% of that are people 18 to 29 who are not super likely to vote in general. Somewhere north of 6% of active users are too young to vote. The most active twitter users are journalists, a few writers, activists, and celebrities. Twitter also isn't really a place where regular people go for election information.
- hellomyguys 4y agoTwitter has a large off platform impact though. It's where information starts and/or spreads and eventually hits Facebook, less mainstream news sources, and in real life conversations.
- ch4s3 4y agoIs it where information starts? That seems highly questionable to me. Any references here?
- eclipticplane 4y agoI hope to live to see a world where some random famous person tweeting isn't listed as news, at all.
- xenospn 4y agoTweets often end up as major news stories on other outlets.
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- kaizendad 4y agoSeems to me that we will very, very quickly see why these teams were created. Less snarkily, I appreciate that not everyone loved their work. But their work solved a particular problem, even if it created others. Now that problem is unsolved again. It will be interesting to see if a better solution to the problem appears by 2024, or if the decision is to allow that original problem to exist.
- polski-g 4y agoThose teams didn't exist in 2012 and nothing bad happened
- chillwaves 4y agoThe world is a different place than it was in 2012. Imo, around 2010/2012 is when social media disinfo in politics really started taking off in an organized/concerted way from the big players.
- polski-g 4y agoPolitical disinfo isn't new. https://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/08/22/mf.campaign.slurs.slogans/ https://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/08/22/mf.campaign.... > Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father."
- slantedview 4y agoIt goes without saying that the political landscape in 2012 vs now is completely different, where one party is actively working to undermine elections.
- wellthatsawrap1 4y ago
- brink 4y agoHow are you supposed to trust a team to moderate election information a-politically? It's no secret that this team had a bias, fully displaying its faults. To me, this is a reasonable move.
- MBCook 4y agoPlenty of things are flat out facts and those can be moderated objectively. When do polls open? When do they close? What IDs do you need to vote? Can you register when you vote? Where are polling places? Did channel X actually call a race? Is the number of votes that voted actually the number the state offices released? Is voting day Tuesday or Wednesday? Not everything is grey and interpretation based. I’m not looking for them to call if Biden is a good president or Herschel Walker is qualified. Just stop people from committing voter suppression (which is illegal anyway) with demonstrably false facts.
- sacrosancty 4y ago
- commandlinefan 4y ago> facts and those can be moderated objectively. That’s true. I don’t trust twitters moderation team to limit themselves to those facts even a teeny, tiny bit.
- slantedview 4y agoThrowing the baby out with the bathwater, which is what happened here, will result in misinformation about these basic things being used to suppress votes from being cast.
- remarkEon 4y agoThis sentiment, and this thread, is bordering on unintelligible. Is Twitter such critical election infrastructure now that if it’s trending information is not perfect the provenance of the election is now in question? If so, how long has Twitter been this important? Would elections function without it? How much “misinformation” is enough for the election to be suspect? Is this concern simply limited to what’s on Twitter itself and not, ya know, out in the citizenry?
- bombcar 4y agoWell now we know what the outcome of the election will be blamed on, I suppose. I’m still waiting for a fail whale. I was promised a whale!
- Cypher 4y agoI remember reddit banning anyone with the 'wrong' view in 2016
- TheRealDunkirk 4y agoThe only surprise was how long it took them. It was clear that something like Cambridge Analytica had hacked the front page algorithm for many months leading up to the election.
- bink 4y agoWhich view was that?
- peter422 4y agoYes like when they famously banned Donald Trump in 2016.
- khazhoux 4y agoYou are mischaracterizing. r/The_Donald got banned for front-page manipulation even after repeated warnings.
- kibwen 4y ago/r/the_donald didn't even get banned until 2020. In 2016, Reddit was forced to change their front page algorithm after the_donald spent all summer gaming the algorithm to float multiple megathreads to the top of /r/all every day, leading to the rise of subreddits like /r/enoughtrumpspam as a way to bring attention to the issue of vote manipulation. IIRC, as a result of the algorithm change, pinned posts were no longer given special treatment by the algorithm and subreddits could no longer have more than one post on the front page at any given time. It was a rule that applied to every subreddit, but of course the_donald shrieked about censorship due to their sudden lack of ability to shove their nonsense down everyone's throats every single day.
- whoiscroberts 4y agoGood, why do we want anonymous censors influencing what people post?
- gleenn 4y agoAre you suggesting we post the personal details of the Twitter employees? I think that's a little silly. Twitter isn't censoring so much as they are moderating. There's a difference: one is a third party trying to stop two parties from communicating, and another is a third party attempting to prevent bad actors from ruining the platform. There is a difference.
- plazmatic 4y ago[dead]
- greatwhitenorth 4y ago
- kodyo 4y ago
- coffeeblack 4y ago
- photochemsyn 4y agoI would urge anyone whose uses tweets as a basis for decisions on who or what to vote for, to not do so. The same is true for campaign ads on YT and other social media platforms, or on cable TV channels, or on billboards or campaign mailers. If you're going to vote, be responsible and do a diligent background check on the candidates and measures in your district. Check their funding sources (opensecrets). Check their voting history, if they're an incumbent. See what donors and PACs they owe loyalty to. Yes, it takes a little time, and you may have to deal with Google or other search engines presenting biased results, but then at least you have some idea what you're really voting for. However, I personally think these Congressmembers have very little real power or decision-making capability. They're lower down in the state-corporate hierarchy, with the actual Central Committee consisting of people like CEOs of the major defense contractors, investment banks and hedge funds, fossil fuel producers, technology and communications corporation, etc. The American government is essentially an oligarchic or plutocratic system, with politicians and bureaucrats acting as little more than middle managers.
- molotovh 4y agoOr, to put it another way: don't depend on a single channel for the majority of your information, regardless of what that channel is. If you get your information from a variety of unrelated channels, then one channel being compromised becomes much less of an issue.
- refurb 4y agoThis is terrible! Without this team who will suppress “disinformation” right before an election that later turns out to be true? We can’t have this! https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/31/hunter-biden-laptop-findings-renew-scrutiny-twitter-facebook-crackdowns/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/31/hunter-bi...
- systemvoltage 4y agoAll you need to know is this: The betting odds of this coming election [1] (not 538 or polls) to understand the situation on social media. Post-musk meltdown to thumping on social media about misinformation. [1] https://www.predictit.org/ https://www.predictit.org/