OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
New Twitter CEO Elon Musk is having his presence felt by some members of his staff and some liberals are furious.
A week ahead of the midterm elections the new Twitter CEO has blocked many of his Twitter staff from accessing content moderation tools used to suspend and ban accounts, Time Magazine reported.
Most people who work in Twitter’s Trust and Safety organization are currently unable to alter or penalize accounts that break rules around misleading information, offensive posts and hate speech, except for the most high-impact violations that would involve real-world harm, according to people familiar with the matter. Those posts were prioritized for manual enforcement, they said.
People who were on call to enforce Twitter’s policies during Brazil’s presidential election did get access to the internal tools on Sunday, but in a limited capacity, according to two of the people. The company is still utilizing automated enforcement technology, and third-party contractors, according to one person, though the highest-profile violations are typically reviewed by Twitter employees.
Twitter staff use dashboards, known as agent tools, to carry out actions like banning or suspending an account that is deemed to have breached policy. Detection of policy breaches can either be flagged by other Twitter users or detected automatically, but taking action on them requires human input and access to the dashboard tools. Those tools have been suspended since last week, the people said.
“So @Twitter has reportedly limited employee access to content moderation tools used to enforce its misinformation + civic integrity policies. There are 7 days left until the U.S. midterm elections. This does NOT seem good,” one Twitter user said.
So @Twitter has reportedly limited employee access to content moderation tools used to enforce its misinformation + civic integrity policies.
There are 7 days left until the U.S. midterm elections. This does NOT seem good.https://t.co/pCPv5qCNv9
— John Voelcker (@johnvoelcker) November 1, 2022
“Sooooo…. The conspiracy theory looks like ‘Elon bought Twitter to deactivate content moderation before midterms’?” another said.
Sooooo…. The conspiracy theory looks like "Elon bought Twitter to deactivate content moderation before midterms"?
— Nick Lange (@Nick_Lange_) November 1, 2022
“Elon Musk took down any moderation and allowed MAGA to flood back into Twitter to spread their lies a week before the midterm election day. Let that sink in,” another user said.
Elon Musk took down any moderation and allowed MAGA to flood back into Twitter to spread their lies a week before the midterm election day. Let that sink in.
— Arcade (@arcades_revenge) November 2, 2022
“Twitter limits employee access to content-moderation tools as midterm election nears In less than a week Musk is already destroying credibility of Twitter — didn’t we learn anything from 2016 election & all those fake, pro-Trump Russian accounts?” another said.
Twitter limits employee access to content-moderation tools as midterm election nears
In less than a week Musk is already destroying credibility of Twitter — didn't we learn anything from 2016 election & all those fake, pro-Trump Russian accounts?https://t.co/V4bZKQ4tjA
— Peter Grinspoon, M.D. (@Peter_Grinspoon) November 1, 2022
Musk appears to have been vindicated over his prior accusations that he was not getting all the information he requested from Twitter executives prior to taking over the platform.
Earlier this week, Musk took to his platform to share what appears to be an internal Twitter communication thread that began with Yoel Roth, the chief of Safety and Integrity at the platform.
On Sunday, the multi-billionaire highlighted the communication as evidence that the former executives of Twitter, as well as company attorneys, hid evidence from a court that pertained to his attempt to back out of his acquisition of the social media giant.
The Western Journal notes:
Musk identified the corporate law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, which represented the social media company in legal proceedings with the South African-born entrepreneur, according to Bloomberg. In the messages, Roth suggests he could accuse an apparent Twitter employee identified as “Amir” of having falsified his “Objectives and Key Results,” or “OKRs,” a metric used by technology companies such as Twitter to outline goals and assess outcomes.
Roth even points out that such falsification would amount to the same behavior Musk claimed Twitter’s executives were responsible for.
“Literally doing what Elon is accusing us of doing,” Roth wrote.
Wachtell & Twitter board deliberately hid this evidence from the court. Stay tuned, more to come … pic.twitter.com/CifaNvtRtt
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
For weeks over the summer, Musk attempted to obtain more information from Twitter’s executives regarding bot and spam accounts after the executives claimed that the vast majority of accounts were real. In early September, he responded to an independent analysis that found most Twitter accounts, by far, are fake, spam, or bot accounts.
According to leading cyber security specialist Dan Woods, who formerly worked for the FBI and CIA, as many as 80 percent of Twitter accounts are bots, The Australian reported.
“Sure sounds higher than 5%!” Musk wrote on the platform in response to Woods’ findings.
Sure sounds higher than 5%!
https://t.co/Va7TxxzoI6— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 1, 2022
“More than 80 per cent of Twitter accounts are likely bots, according to former CIA and FBI cyber security specialist Dan Woods, who created a fake profile and quickly gained more than 100,000 fake followers in one weekend by purchasing them on the dark web,” the outlet reported.
“Mr Woods, who studies bot traffic as part of his current role with global cyber security provider F5, told The Australian that Twitter’s bot traffic was almost certainly far greater than it has expressed publicly and greater than it believes internally,” the outlet continued.
“I’m not a programmer, but I watched YouTube and in a weekend I wrote a script that automatically creates accounts on Twitter without encountering any obstacles,” he told the outlet.
