According to four people familiar with the discussions between Elon Musk, Twitter executives, and regulators in Brussels, the European Union instructed Musk to hire more human moderators and fact-checkers to review posts on Twitter. This information was reported by the Financial Times on Monday.
The demand makes it more difficult for Musk to restructure the loss-making company he bought in October for $44 billion. In an effort to find less expensive ways to monitor tweets, he has cut more than half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, including the whole trust and safety teams in some places, according to the story.
The significant reduction in staff has prompted questions about Twitter’s ability to abide by the EU’s Digital Services Act, which mandates that internet companies put specific safeguards in place against illegal content before the law takes effect in its entirety in early 2024.
Twitter has been heavily relying on technology to weed out certain manual content inspections. Unlike to bigger rival Meta Platforms Inc, which owns Facebook and Instagram, it does not employ fact checkers, according to the article.
Thierry Breton, the industry leader for the European Union, warned Musk of the ‘big job ahead’ for Twitter to implement open usage regulations, drastically strengthen content monitoring, and safeguard free speech in a video conversation in January.
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