Twitter can’t protect you from trolls any more, insiders say

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Twitter can’t protect you from trolls any more, insiders say
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Current and former employees of the company say there are serious ramifications from mass lay-offs.

By Marianna SpringTwitter insiders have told the BBC that the company is no longer able to protect users from trolling, state-co-ordinated disinformation and child sexual exploitation, following lay-offs and changes under owner Elon Musk.

Targeted harassment campaigns aimed at curbing freedom of expression, and foreign influence operations - once removed daily from Twitter - are going "undetected", according to a recent employee. It turns out, I was right. A team from the International Center for Journalists and the University of Sheffield have been tracking the hate I receive, and their data revealed the abuse targeted at me on Twitter had more than tripled since Mr Musk took over, compared with the same period in the year before.

"A totally new person, without the expertise, is doing what used to be done by more than 20 people," says Sam. "That leaves room for much more risk, many more possibilities of things that can go wrong." He thinks for Mr Musk it's about money. He says cleaning and catering staff were all sacked - and that Mr Musk even tried to sell the office plants to employees.

"Overall 60% of users deleted or edited their reply when given a chance through the nudge," she says. "But what was more interesting, is that after we nudged people once, they composed 11% fewer harmful replies in the future." During this investigation, I've had messages from many people who've told me how the hate they receive on Twitter has been increasing since Mr Musk took over - sharing examples of racism, antisemitism and misogyny.

Some of the accounts had even been set up around the time of Mr Musk's takeover. They appeared to be dedicated to sending out hate, without profile pictures or identifying features.

Mr Musk's key priorities since the takeover - according to his tweets - are to make the social media company profitable and to champion freedom of expression. Ray Serrato worked in a team that specialised in tackling these operations. He left in November because he felt there wasn't a clear vision to protect users under the new leadership. He says his team would identify suspicious activity like this "daily". Now his team has been "decimated" and exists in a "minimised capacity".

His team would identify accounts sharing abusive content about children, escalating the worst to law enforcement. Before the takeover such content was a huge problem, he says - and he already feared they were understaffed.But his team was cut soon after the acquisition, he says, from 20 people to around six or seven. In his view that's too few to keep on top of the workload.

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