With the midterm elections in the US in two weeks, around 20 Twitter employees have volunteered to help the social media’s internal “Election Squad” implement the rules at a crucial moment for US politics.
According to a report in The Washington Post, the volunteers have learned the basics of how to sport misinformation, detect bots’ propaganda and highlight violation of Twitter’s rules to the policy staff in a crash-course training sessions this week.
The company has been working since 2018 to moderate content to curb viral falsehoods, intimation campaigns and foreign influence during a week before and after the vote during major elections.
However, during this election, Twitter is in greater confusion than ever, increasing the risk that political groups might be able to use it to deceive voters or undermine legitimacy.
Earlier on Friday, Elon Musk, who is now the new owner of Twitter, fired the social media company’s four top executives, including Indian-origin CEO Parag Agrawal and legal executive Vijaya Gadde.
The New York Times said in a report that Musk has closed the USD 44-billion deal to buy Twitter on Thursday. Citing people with knowledge of the situation, the report said that Musk “has started cleaning house at Twitter with the firings of at least four top executives”.
The Twitter executives who were fired include Agrawal, Gadde, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and General Counsel Sean Edgett.
Reports said that there are apprehensions that Elon Musk will roll back Twitter’s content moderation efforts, reinstate some of its most notorious purveyors of election lies and lay off as much as 75 percent of its workforce.
However, how his changes will affect Twitter’s midterm plan is unknown. Musk has consistently criticized Twitter for what he sees as an overly censorial approach to online speech.
Musk has also suggested that he might lift the existing ban on former president Donald Trump. On Friday, a statement attributed to Donald Trump started circulating on social media claiming that his suspended Twitter account “will be back up and running” by Monday.
In the purported statement, the Republican leader congratulated Musk on his purchase of the social media company and, citing “many people”, said that the old management was “too concerned with the woke agenda.” However, the statement was retracted hours after it was published.
Twitter has played a major role in global politics from the Arab Spring to the Trump presidency, the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter.
The midterms become more crucial for the US and the social media platform since hundreds of Republican candidates have embraced Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
Amid the disinformation campaign and Twitter’s decision, experts say that any such misinformation on social media platforms could erode Americans’ faith in the electoral process.
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