How Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition may affect the midterms

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The changes Musk has made to Twitter over the past week could weaken its safeguards for elections, just before the midterms are set to take place.

About half of twitters workforce was let go by owner Elon Musk, which is one of the many changes within Twitter recently. Bill Ritter has the story.

Musk promised not to alter any of Twitter's content policies until after the midterms. But the changes he has already made to the company have left it weakened and vulnerable, said Paul Barrett, deputy director of New York University's Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. "We don't flag anything to platforms around misinformation, disinformation," Jen Easterly, director of the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency , told CNN Saturday evening. "That is entirely up to those platforms - Twitter, social media - based on their terms of service and how they enforce it.

But while Twitter's cuts to its content moderation workforce may have been less severe than at other parts of the company, the broad layoffs in certain cases eliminated whole teams, some with important roles to play in election coverage. "He cannot enforce content moderation policies if he doesn't have the staff to do so," said Jessica González, co-CEO of Free Press. Civil rights groups have spearheaded a campaign targeting Twitter's largest advertisers, calling on them to pause their ad spend on the platform. Already this past week, major brands including General Mills and Audi have suspended their Twitter advertising, contributing to what Musk has called a steep revenue decline at the company.

Esther Crawford, a director of product management at Twitter, confirmed the service was not yet live, writing on Saturday in a tweet: "The new Blue isn't live yet - the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time."

 

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