The social media giant fired its contractors who monitor hate and other harmful content on Saturday. Some of the contractors said they didn’t realize they were fired until they couldn’t log into work Saturday. Musk’s move comes after Twitter laid off much of its full-time workforce via email on Nov. 4. About 4,400 of the 5,500 contractors have been laid off, according to reporter Casey Newton of Platformer News. Melissa Ingle, who had worked at Twitter as a contractor for more than a year, was one of several contractors who said they were fired without notice on Saturday. He said he was concerned abuse on Twitter would increase with the number of employees leaving. “I love the platform and I really enjoyed working at the company and trying to make it better. And I’m just really afraid of what’s going to slip through the cracks,” he said. Twitter’s contractors were laid off without warning on Saturday as Elon Musk tries to cut the company’s workforce Some contractors said they had no idea they were fired until they were unable to log into the company’s systems. Photo: Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco Newton said those affected employees are involved in Twitter’s marketing, content management and real estate areas. “Contractors are not notified at all, they just lose access to Slack and email,” Newton tweeted. “Managers realized this when their workers just disappeared from the system. They heard nothing from their leaders.’ A Twitter manager wrote on the company’s Slack site that a contractor was working on a child safety workflow when they were locked out without warning, according to Newton. A contractor said they learned they were fired from Newton’s tweets mentioning the mass firing. “Just found out you got fired reading your tweets and then trying to log in with slack and email and realized everything was gone,” the contractor wrote.
Reporter Casey Newton said those affected employees are involved in Twitter’s marketing, content management and real estate areas. Newton said some contractors were not notified at all One contractor said he didn’t find out he was fired until he read a scathing tweet from a reporter Ingle, a data scientist, said she worked in the data and tracking department of Twitter’s social integrity team. Her work included writing algorithms to find political disinformation on the platform in countries such as the US, Brazil, Japan, Argentina and elsewhere. Ingle said she was “pretty sure I was done” when she couldn’t access her work email on Saturday. The notification from the contracting company he had been hired by came two hours later. “I’ll just put my resumes out there and talk to people,” he said. ‘I have two kids. And I’m worried about being able to give them a nice Christmas, you know, and just little things like that that are important. I just think it’s particularly heartless to do it right now.” Content moderation expert Sarah Roberts, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, tweeted on Sunday that “about 3,000+ Twitter contractors were laid off last night.” Twitter has not said how many contract employees it cut. The company has disbanded its communications department and has not responded to media requests for information since Musk took over. Contractors also do other jobs to help keep Twitter running, “All contractors are not content moderation agents,” Roberts said. “Contractors fulfill many key roles within the company. But almost all the agents of moderation are contractors.’ Musk’s move comes after he fired a handful of Twitter employees via email on Nov. 4 Musk recently tweeted: “Please note that Twitter will be doing a lot of dumb things in the coming months. We’ll keep what works and change what doesn’t.” In the first days after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October and fired its board and top executives, Tesla’s billionaire CEO sought to reassure civil rights groups and advertisers that the platform could continue to fight hatred. That message was echoed by Twitter’s then-head of content moderation, Yoel Roth, who tweeted that the November 4 layoffs affected only 15% of the Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to about 50% cuts across the company ), with our front -Line supervisory staff have the least impact’. Roth has since resigned from the company, joining an exodus of high-level leaders tasked with privacy, cybersecurity and regulatory compliance.

TIMELINE OF ELON MUSK’S CHAOSIC ATTEMPT TO TAKE OVER TWITTER

April 2: Musk announces he owns 9.2% of the company, making him its largest single shareholder April 14: Musk offers to take Twitter private at $54.20 per share, valuing the company at $44 billion April 25: Twitter accepts Musk’s offer April 29: Musk sells $8 billion in Tesla stock to finance deal May 13: Musk says deal with Twitter is on hold pending review of bot accounts May 26: Musk sued Twitter for stock manipulation during the acquisition July 8: Musk says he’s pulling out of the deal. Twitter is suing, trying to force him to see it. October 4: Musk again suggests moving the deal forward at the original price October 17: Proposed trial date in Delaware October 26: Musk visits Twitter headquarters with a sink, updates his website bio to “Chief Twit” and designates his location as Twitter HQ October 27: Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter finally closes October 28: Musk fires top Twitter employees, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and senior adviser Vijaya Gadde, the woman responsible for banning President Trump after the January 6 riots last year. October 30: Musk told Twitter employees to make verified accounts a feature exclusive to Twitter Blue, the platform’s paid subscription service October 31: Musk confirms he’s Twitter’s new CEO and dissolves board