Twitter confirms 140 jobs to go from Irish operation

Elon Musk’s mass layoff of 50% of the company’s global workforce has led to concerns that hate speech and misinformation could thrive on the platform in the resultant vacuum.

The Government has been formally notified by Twitter that it intends to lay off 140 of its Irish employees, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said.

Mr Varadkar said “at long last” the Government has received the redundancy notice, as legally required from Twitter, saying it intends to sack over a third of its staff.

“We did receive, at long last, the redundancy notice from Twitter today in the department. It's about 140 redundancies,” he said.

“So obviously once again my thoughts are with the staff who are affected. It's roughly just over a third of the staff in Dublin will be made redundant,” he said.

Mr Varadkar said those affected can be assured that they'll receive government help, whether it's job search support to find new employment, or whether they want to set up their own business.

“We can help with that too. Whether it's going back to education or training,” he added.

Mr Varadkar said it was “premature” to talk about the total demise of the platform but said the Government will use whatever platform is in existence to communicate its business.

Stamping out hate

An Irish anti-hate organisation is among 44 civil society groups that have written to Twitter CEO Elon Musk demanding that he make the social network “safe for all users”.

The Far Right Observatory has joined other global organisations in sending the letter to billionaire Mr Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, asking that he invest “appropriate global resources to stop the spread of disinformation, hate speech, incitement to violence, and extremist propaganda on the platform”.

The letter specifically calls for an end to exemptions from content moderation for the politically powerful and influencers; for assurances that “proportionate resources” for content moderation be put in place in all regions and languages where Twitter operates; and for the company’s violent organisations and hateful conduct policies to be clarified and improved.

Twitter’s dedicated human rights and ethics teams were fired en masse as part of Mr Musk’s mass layoff of 50% of the company’s global workforce on November 4, leading to concerns that hate speech and misinformation could thrive on the platform in the resultant vacuum.

“It is deeply concerning to see that under your leadership there has already been disinvestment in teams working to better moderate content and ensure algorithms work to amplify facts instead of lies and hate,” the letter reads.

“Our movement... is united in urging you to commit the necessary resources to ensure human rights are protected on Twitter... and that Twitter is positioned as a platform where ideas are discussed and challenged without abuse.

Twitter's future

Meanwhile, the chances of Twitter being knocked offline have "dramatically increased" in the past 24 hours after hundreds of company staff rejected Mr Musk's ultimatum of agreeing to work more intensely in order to stay at the company, an industry expert has said.

Matt Navarra said it was unlikely the site would go down in the next few days. But he warned it was under increased strain as key engineers who are charged with maintaining the site leave just as a major event for Twitter — the World Cup — begins this weekend.

Concerns have grown over the site's ability to stay online after Mr Musk fired half of the company's 7,500 workers, as well as a number of additional contractors.

Hundreds more are now reported to have left after not agreeing to an ultimatum from the billionaire this week that staying at the company to build a new "hardcore" Twitter would require longer, more intense working patterns.

Mr Navarra said that Twitter was "already at greater risk" of falling offline because of the initial job cuts, but warned there had now been a "significant shift" in that risk because of the latest exodus.

"There are reports of teams that are critical for a number of Twitter's infrastructure systems now being completely empty - those teams have been completely decimated," he said.

"And therefore if there's anything that goes wrong or breaks or there's a sudden surge in activity then the capability of Twitter to repair it or troubleshoot it is greatly reduced because of the lack of skilled engineers that the teams have now."