Elon Musk has sent the mainstream press into a tizzy again. On Wednesday, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter) slashed the company's "election integrity" team in half and canned the leader of the division.
That came in response to Musk's previous charge that Twitter interfered in prior elections by censoring and throttling content.
X is reportedly halving its global team responsible for combatting election misinformation, a reduction that leaves the site less prepared than ever to curb problematic content and seems to contradicts the company's reassurances that it was actually adding to those ranks.
The company, which was formerly known as Twitter, has cut each member of the team based in Dublin, including the group's head, according to The Information. The team may now total no more than six people, most of them based in North America.
You can feel the consternation in the various reports floating around. The narrative is that X will not be able to fight "misinformation" and "curb problematic content" despite the fact that it is not a private company's job to insert itself into public debates at that level.
Sure enough, the wailing and gnashing of teeth is already starting.
Critics of X were quick to pillory the layoffs. "X will continue to be a toxic hellscape that people and advertisers should avoid," said Kyle Morse, deputy executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a watchdog group.
Ishan Mehta, director for media and democracy at Common Cause, another watchdog organization, said X has largely severed communications with groups like his and that the layoffs were "dangerous and irresponsible for a platform that has many millions of users."
I suspect this was a financial move as much as anything, but it's a welcome development given what happened during the 2020 election with the Hunter Biden laptop story. At the end of the day, free speech (within legal constraints) on social media platforms is far preferable to having a team of hall monitors who will inevitably let bias influence their decisions.