Elon Musk has cut staff from the X team that combats election disinformation claiming they were actually “undermining election integrity.”
The platform, formerly known as Twitter, got rid of half of the global team, including four people at its Dublin office and its head, sources told The Information.
Mr Musk later confirmed the move on X, stating: “Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.”
With the 2024 US presidential election just over a year away, the team may now have only six staff members, most of them in North America, reported The Messenger.
The Independent has reached out to the platform for comment on the cuts and received a message back stating, “Busy now, please check back later.”
The move comes less than a month after the company announced in a blog post that it was “expanding” its “safety and elections teams to focus on combating manipulation, surfacing inauthentic accounts and closely monitoring the platform for emerging threats.”
Oh you mean the “Election Integrity” Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 27, 2023
CEO Linda Yaccarino recently told The Financial Times that the platform was aiming to expand its elections and trust and safety teams.
Mr Musk slashed the company’s workforce when he completed his $44bn purchase of the company, which he had repeatedly tried to back out of.
Elon Musk leaving the US Capitol following a meeting in the office of US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in September— (AFP via Getty Images)
In February The New York Times reported that the company had gone from 7,500 employees to fewer than 2,000 following repeated rounds of job cuts.
The cuts included many from its trust and safety team, as well as senior executives in that area, such as Yoel Roth and Ella Irwin.
Mr Roth, the former head of trust and safety, wrote a guest essay for the newspaper in which he revealed that following online attacks from Mr Musk and Donald Trump he has been forced to live with armed security guards outside his home and had to go into hiding for months.
