Twitter safety chief offers reassurance then tells recruiters his DMs are open

The huge upheaval at Twitter has raised concerns about security on the site, especially as the cybersecurity teams have not been spared from Elon Musk’s shock-and-awe approach to HR. 

That drew out Yoel Roth, the head of safety and security at the company who this morning sought to address the issue.

Twitter's new owner is currently in the process of firing half the staff, however, cuts in the safety and integrity group appear to be smaller.

Writing on the micro-blogging site Roth claims the core moderation capabilities remain in place.

“Yesterday’s reduction in force affected approximately 15 percent of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50 percent cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.”

According to Roth, “Last week, for security reasons, we restricted access to our internal tools for some users, including some members of my team. 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.”

He claimed most of our incoming content moderation volume (over 80 percent) was completely unaffected by this access change. 

“The daily volume of moderation actions we take stayed steady through this period.

Midterms

Another issue of concern is the impact of the changes on the US mid-term elections, where both sides of a highly divided, heavily partisan society believe the rules (and algorithms) are stacked against them.

“With early voting underway in the US, our efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority,” he wrote.

He also highlighted what the company is not doing.

“In the short term, we’ve had to deprioritise a few workflows — like account access (lost password requests), and some suspension appeals. We’re working to get these back online in the days to come.”

Looking to assure users and advertisers (who are abandoning the platform in ever-increasing numbers) Roth wrote, “I’ll continue to share updates about our Trust & Safety work as things evolve in the days to come. Our team's mission of enforcing our policies and protecting the conversations happening on Twitter remains unchanged.”

In a final note, he made a call out to recruiters to direct message him, “I have recommendations for incredibly smart and compassionate talent that is now available.”

It wasn’t clear whether he was also referring to himself, but seriously, who could blame him?