Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Twitter — now X — all reduced trust and safety personnel in 2023, according to Wired.
“Is there a way to force them to do that?” Foreign Policy magazine Editor-in-Chief Ravi Agrawal asked Givens. “Push them to do that.”
“You get them to places like Davos, and you have them talk about the work,” Givens responded, laughing. “The staffing and decisions of companies, making sure they’re putting in those investments, making sure that they’re sharing information, that they’re doing it not just for the U.S. election but for the other elections … That has to stay a key focus. Even if there is political pressure.”
Givens noted “interventions” social media platforms have adopted, such as monitoring so-called misinformation and disinformation, asking users if they have read an article before they share it and fact-checking. She said these are “bare minimum” essentials for 2024.
Givens eventually said legislating censorship of “misinformation” is “dangerous territory” at the end of the panel discussion and noted the importance of “transparency” about content moderation decisions. The CDT pointed the DCNF to its content moderation transparency recommendations.
Furthermore, Harvard Professor of the History of Science Naomi Oreskes and President of swissuniversities Luciana Vaccaro disclosed their mutual dislike for billionaire Elon Musk’s X during a Monday forum on “Liberating Science.”
“For a long time I was on Twitter and now it’s become such a toxic place that I’ve concluded it’s not a worthwhile place to spend time,” Oreskes stated. “I have given up on X. What a scary name that even is, right?”
“It’s [a] very toxic environment and … I have no solution on that,” Vaccaro responded. “I think there will be a societal reflection on how information is brought there. Of course on X now there is also the policy of the owner that is problematic but I think this is a problem of the society of the future.”
Under Musk, X has reduced its total worldwide trust and safety staff, including employees and contractors, by 30%, from 4,062 to 2,849, according to a recent report by Australia’s eSafety Commission.
A reporter for Rebel News later pressed Oreskes on her X comments, asking her, “What’s wrong with X?”
“Where do I start?” she responded, laughing. “So much disinformation on that channel.”
The reporter asked if X should have more censorship, but Oreskes said she would not respond to that query.
Harvard, Internews, swissuniversities and the WEF did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.