Twitter restricts staff from policing content violations ahead of US midterms

A few months ago, the company promised that it would take its role in preserving election integrity seriously.

Yoel Roth, the head of safety and integrity atTwitter, said there was nothing unusual about the decision. Employees will not be able to make changes to the software code during the transition because the company is limiting access.

In the midst of a corporate transition, any company should be doing this. The rules are still being enforced.

The content moderation staff that was approved to access the dashboard that logs automated and user-flagged content that requires human review has been slashed. Hundreds of employees would use the dashboard to review content and manually enforce actions dictated by the policy of the social network. The total number of employees has been reduced to about 15.

The most high-profile policy violations are the ones that could involve real-world harm.

Twitter likely to struggle to enforce election integrity policy

The timing could have real-world consequences in this fall's elections if this decision is not made soon. Some staff had access to the dashboard, but only in a limited capacity. Even before Musk took over, experts said that there wasn't enough being done to prevent misinformation from spreading.

Ahead of Brazil's presidential election, incumbent Jair Bolsonaro began to sow seeds of doubt in the election's integrity, like Donald Trump did before his ban on social media. People with hundreds of thousands of followers claimed that the counting was fraudulent, according to Human Rights Watch. The international non-governmental agency highlighted a problematictweet that has 30,000 likes. It has not been flagged as needing a link to "credible information or helpful context" in order for it to be seen by users.

When popular accounts spread fake news that goes unmoderated it can be cause for public concern. According to a report in Science, only 1% of individuals accounted for 80% of fake news exposure during the US presidential election.

Ars asked if the current software code freeze would affect the company's ability to enforce its election integrity policy, but they didn't reply. According to employees from the trust and safety team, they believe that the company will be short-handed in implementing policies in the run up to the election. In a letter to advertisers, Musk said that he understands that failure is a very real possibility and that he was motivated to prevent divisiveness.

The days since Musk took over have seen a rise in hate speech on the social networking site. According to the Washington Post, the service's new owner wanted to make a big mess of it.

The surge in hate is not a result of policy changes. He wrote that they have not made any changes to the policy. He said that he would be forming a moderation council as part of his redesign of the micro-messaging service.