Twitter limits some content moderation tools just days before the midterms

Days after Elon Musk took over Twitter and just before the midterms in America, the social media site has curtailed some content moderation tools.

It can hinder staff from stopping misinformation as they cannot manually change or penalize accounts.

The change is the latest to be made by Musk and comes after he implemented significant staff cuts and fired the Twitter board, making him the sole member.

He is also reportedly considering other major new ideas, including charging $20 a month for verification.

Those who work in Twitter’s Trust and Safety organization are currently unable to modify or punish accounts that violate the platform’s rules regarding misleading information, abusive messages, and hate speech.

According to insiders on the matter, they can only punish people who make posts that violate Twitter rules to the extent that they cause harm in the real world. Bloomberg.

They added that the team manually enforced those posts.

At Twitter, employees have dashboards called agent tools to ban or suspend accounts that have violated the policy.

Policy violations can be automatically detected or flagged by other Twitter users.

However, only Twitter employees can delete or suspend accounts from the dashboard.

But according to insiders, the tools have been out of use since last week.

It is alleged that this restriction was put in place as Twitter transitions to Musk ownership in an effort to prevent employees from requesting changes to the app.

Sources at the company who wished to remain anonymous revealed that the high level of access to the tools given to employees has dropped from hundreds to just 15.

Fears are growing that it will be harder to enforce Twitter policies and filter out misinformation as the US creeps closer to midterms on November 8.

Team members must uphold disinformation and civil integrity policies. These rules were routinely broken by former President Trump in the run-up to the 2020 election and beyond, according to Twitter.

It comes after misinformation on the site during Brazil’s presidential election, which ended yesterday in which leftist Lula voted back.

The team had limited access to the internal moderation tools. Twitter uses automated enforcement technology and third-party contractors.

But high-level violations, according to insiders, are usually judged by those who work for Twitter.

Dailymail.com has reached out to Twitter for comment.

Yoel Roth, chief of security and integrity, tweeted about the story: “This is exactly what we (or any company) should be doing in the midst of a business transition to reduce the opportunities for insider risk. We still enforce our Twitter rules widely.”

It comes in the days since billionaire Musk finalized his deal to privatize the social media platform.

Twitter employees are concerned about other possible changes to the platform, including turning back data access for researchers and academics and dealing with foreign influence operations.

Musk’s takeover came as there was a spike in hate speech on Twitter. Data from Dataminr showed a 1,700 percent spike in the use of racist comments.

It was the equivalent of 215 times every five minutes at its peak and took place during a period when the Trust team had no access to enforce moderation policies.

In direct response to the defamation, Roth tweeted about the matter yesterday.

He said “very few people” see the content on Twitter and added: “Since Saturday, we have been focused on addressing the rise in hateful behavior on Twitter. We’ve made measurable progress, removing over 1,500 accounts and reducing the number of impressions on this content to nearly zero.”

It was described by Roth as a “targeted, short-term trolling campaign.”

While Musk has said he hasn’t made any changes to the content moderation policy, he has said he finds the rules on Twitter restrictive.

And he described himself as a liberal absolutist, who reportedly questioned the policy as he spoke to staff.

Musk plans to review Twitter’s general disinformation policy.

Twitter’s policy penalizes posts including falsehoods on topics such as election results and Covid.

According to insiders, Musk wants a more specific policy against disinformation.

The billionaire also wants a review of Twitter’s hateful behavior policy.

He has reportedly asked the team to investigate the section on “targeted mis-sexing or dead naming of transgender people.”

But it has not yet been disclosed whether the policy will be rewritten at Musk’s request or whether restrictions will be removed completely.

It comes after it was revealed yesterday that Musk is considering charging a $20 fee for verification per month.

He had tweeted, “The whole verification process is now being refreshed.”

The new Twitter CEO has reportedly issued an ultimatum to the social media platform’s engineers, telling them to refresh Twitter’s verification system in less than a fortnight or they will be fired.

Casey Newton from platform player reported that Twitter was inclined to ask verified users to pay for the privilege.

The potential move sparked controversy on social media, with author Stephen King tweeting, “$20 a month to keep my blue check? Damn, they should pay me. If that’s implemented, I’ll be gone, as will Enron.’