Elon Musk’s X ramps up content moderation efforts with new Trust and Safety office in Austin

In response to content moderation concerns, Elon Musk’s company, X, is hiring 100 employees for a Trust and Safety office in Austin, TX, focusing on child sexual exploitation content.

The move comes amid increased scrutiny, with CEO Linda Yaccarino set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 31, and after an incident involving explicit fake photos of Taylor Swift circulated on the platform without prompt removal.

While the new team will focus on moderating content related to child sexual exploitation, it will also contribute to moderation efforts in other areas such as hate speech and issues like spam and fraud.

Why does it matter?

Musk’s initial pursuit of a free-speech platform followed by a drastically reduction on the content moderation team faced challenges, leading to advertiser departures and a valuation decline. However, although this recent hiring could signal a positive shift from the path the company took under Elon Musk’s leadership, the platform is far from returning to the standards it had before. Mashable provides an important insight by noting that Twitter previously boasted 1,500 content moderators, making the current team of 100 notably smaller.