TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew treaded carefully Tuesday when asked for his opinion on the tumult at Elon Musk-owned Twitter. Speaking at Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum, Chew said it’s “too early to tell” whether Musk’s overhaul will prove prosperous, adding that “I’m sure there are many other changes internally” the public isn’t seeing.
Chew did, however, issue an indirect warning to his new social media rival.
“For many tech companies, including ourselves, one of the largest teams that you will have is your trust and safety team—which is not only the people who design the policies around community guidelines, but the people who complement the machines in terms of the content moderation and protecting the platform and making sure the content is safe,” Chew said. “Now, that is an investment I think is definitely worthwhile if you want to keep the platform a very safe platform.”
Chew’s comments, perhaps unintentionally, cut to one of the biggest question marks still looming over Musk’s embryonic tenure as Twitter’s owner: just how committed is he to keeping Twitter safe?
For all of the attention paid to Musk’s fixation on free speech and fake accounts, Twitter spends huge amounts of time and money on making Twitter into a user- and advertiser-friendly platform.
To wit, Twitter reported that it removed 5.1 million pieces of content from its site in the second half of 2021. Most posts fell under five categories: “abuse/harassment” (1.3 million); “hateful conduct” (1.3 million); “sensitive media,” such as graphic violence or sexual material (1.1 million); “illegal or certain regulated goods and services” (572,000); and “promoting suicide or self-harm” (510,000).
By contrast, headline-grabbing political topics were much less likely to draw the ire of Twitter moderators. Twitter reported removing about 30,000 pieces of content deemed “COVID-19 misleading information” and 100 posts violating the platform’s “civic integrity” regulations. Twitter suspended about 1,400 accounts on COVID-related grounds and four accounts for civic integrity violations.
Musk has made vague commitments to content moderation practices on Twitter, but recent actions suggest safety—at least in the short term—isn’t a top priority.
As multiple media outlets reported earlier this week, Twitter gutted its contract workforce that, in large part, is responsible for the day-to-day execution of content moderation. Those cuts followed Musk slashing Twitter’s full-time workforce dedicated to trust and safety by 15%, according to the department’s former chief, Yoel Roth, as well as several resignations of executives overseeing those efforts.
Twitter hasn’t confirmed the scope of the cuts, but Platformer’s Casey Newton pegged them at roughly 4,400 out of 5,500 workers. Twitter had more than 2,000 people working on front-line content moderation, the platform’s former head of trust and safety, Roth tweeted earlier this month. For context, Chew said Tuesday that TikTok, a platform that likely has four to five times as many daily active users as Twitter, employs “tens of thousands” of people in content moderation.
Then, in an early-morning email Wednesday, Musk told his remaining Twitter employees that the company’s focus will be “much more engineering-driven,” with little reassurance given about the importance of content moderation.
“Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway,” Musk wrote. “At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company, so I think this makes sense.”
For now, Musk’s moves will only add to corporate America’s concerns about their ads commingling on Twitter with offensive content. Dozens of worldwide brands have publicly announced they are pausing their marketing spend on Twitter, while major corporate ad buyers Omnicom Media Group and IPG’s Mediabrands have urged clients to suspend their Twitter campaigns.
There might be some method to Musk’s madness. In theory, Musk could be diverting as many resources as possible to gutting Twitter’s plumbing, in the hopes of re-engineering and revitalizing the platform. If successful, Twitter could attract more users, thereby making it more enticing for advertisers. Once that happens, Musk could reinvest in content moderation.
Would such a gamble work? As Chew said, it’s too early to tell much of anything with Twitter. Advertisers, however, can’t be blamed for bolting before seeing where the chips fall.
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Jacob Carpenter
