UN human rights commissioner appeals to Elon Musk

Geneva — The UN high commissioner for human rights on Saturday issued an open letter to Elon Musk, urging him to “ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter”.

Twitter laid off half its workforce on Friday and tweets by staff of the social media company said the team responsible for human rights was among those affected, a development which commissioner Volker Türk described as not “an encouraging start”.

The company was silent about the depth of the cuts until late in the day, when head of safety & integrity Yoel Roth confirmed the layoffs would affect about 3,700 people, or 50% of the staff.

A class action was filed on Thursday against Twitter by several employees, who argued the company was conducting mass layoffs without providing the required 60-day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.

Musk tweeted that everyone affected by layoffs was offered three months’ severance pay.

“Twitter is part of a global revolution that has transformed how we communicate,” Türk said in the letter. “But I write with concern and apprehension about our digital public square and Twitter’s role in it.

“Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them,” he added. “Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform's use and evolution.”

Twitter said the staff cuts were smaller in the team responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation, as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation.

Tweets by staff of the social media company said teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights and machine learning ethics were among those gutted, as were some product and engineering teams.

The move caps a week of chaos and uncertainty about the company’s future under new owner Musk, the world’s richest person, who tweeted on Friday that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” from the advertiser retreat.

Musk blamed the losses on a coalition of civil rights groups that has been pressing Twitter’s top advertisers to take action if he did not protect content moderation — concerns heightened ahead of potential pivotal congressional elections on Tuesday.

After the layoffs, the groups said they were escalating their pressure and demanding brands pull their Twitter ads globally.

“Unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4m/day,” Musk tweeted of the layoffs, adding that everyone affected was offered three months’ severance pay.

Musk has promised to restore free speech while preventing Twitter from descending into a “hellscape”.

Shannon Raj Singh, an attorney who was Twitter’s acting head of human rights, tweeted that the entire human rights team at the company had been sacked.

Another team that focused on research into how Twitter employed machine learning and algorithms, an issue that is a priority for Musk, was also eliminated, according to a tweet from a former senior manager at Twitter.

Reuters