Details of Elon Musk’s X’s Ambitious Content Moderation Plans Unveiled
Social media company X is hiring 100 content moderators for a new office in Austin, Texas, focused on combating child abuse content. It hopes to achieve the goal by the end of the year, X’s director said on Saturday.
The Elon Musk-owned company unveiled a new “Trust and Safety Center of Excellence” ahead of a Jan. 31 US Senate hearing on online child sexual abuse. X CEO Linda Yaccarino is scheduled to testify along with the CEOs of Meta Platforms, Snap, TikTok and Discord.
“The team is being built right now,” said Joe Benarroch, X’s chief business officer, referring to the Austin office, adding that the goal of filling the positions by the end of the year depends on finding the right talent.
Since Musk bought the company formerly known as Twitter in 2022, the billionaire has been criticized for his own controversial posts and his efforts to overhaul the platform’s content moderation policies.
In a blog post on Friday, X said it suspended 12.4 million accounts last year for violating child sexual exploitation rules, which it said was more than in 2022, when there were 2.3 million account suspensions.
The new Austin center will also help the company combat other types of harmful content, X said.
