Musk’s X to finally hire 100 employees for content moderation team

San Francisco: Elon Musk-run X is reportedly hiring 100 full-time employees for a new trust and safety office in Austin, Texas, after Musk had disbanded the trust and safety teams globally after acquiring the company.

The team would reportedly focus on content related to child sexual exploitation moderation (CSEM), as the platform faces scrutiny.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino is scheduled to depose before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 31 regarding X’s handling of CSEM.

According to reports, the X team “will also help with other moderation enforcement, such as those forbidding hate speech”. The company has posted job listings for such roles, saying moderators will investigate issues like “spam and fraud” and provide customer support.

“At X, we have zero tolerance for Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE), and we are determined to make X inhospitable for actors who seek to exploit minors. In 2023, we made clear that our top priority was tackling CSE online,” the company said in its latest blog post.

“We are also building a Trust and Safety center of excellence in Austin, Texas, to hire more in-house agents so we can keep accelerating our impact,” the company announced.

In 2024, the company said it will improve detection mechanisms to find more reportable content on the platform to report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

In 2023, X suspended 12.4 million accounts for violating its CSE policies. This is up from 2.3 million accounts in 2022.

“In 2024, we will continue our strong investment in this critical area and expand our efforts to educate our users about the importance of helping us to combat child sexual exploitation online,” said the company.