One former Twitter contract employee who wrote models to detect for misinformation on the platform tells NBC Bay Area she is worried that on the platform's current path, users will see more misinformation and abuse.
From her San Francisco home, Melissa Ingle is following the rapid-fire changes at her former employer, Twitter.
Ingle said she had worked as a contract employee at Twitter since September of 2021, serving as a Senior Data Scientist in content moderation for Twitter's civic integrity group.
"We would monitor tweets that contained political information for political misinformation," Ingle explained, noting that her team would monitor elections in the U.S. and around the world.
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On November 12, Ingle said she lost access to her Twitter Slack and email accounts, then received an email alerting her she'd been let go. CNBC reported that a large number of Twitter's contract employees were let go that same weekend. These cuts came after initial layoffs and resignations at the company under Elon Musk's leadership. More employees signaled they were leaving the company on Thursday following Musk's ultimatum that employees commit to "hardcore" work or take severance pay.
"On the current path, I’m really really worried about Twitter’s future," Ingle said.
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Ingle said other former Twitter full-time employees told her in a group chat they had to sign a non-disclosure agreement to receive their severance benefits.
"I’m not given a severance package, they can’t take that away from me, and I think people need to know about this situation," she said.
Saturday, Musk reinstated former President Donald Trump's Twitter account which had been suspended since January of 2021 citing his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. This came after Musk polled his followers on the platform about whether to reinstate the former president.
Grant Kien, Professor of Communications at Cal State University East Bay, said of this action by Musk: "in terms of a marketing ploy, it worked very well."
While Musk posted Friday on Twitter that the decision to reinstate Trump had not been made yet, Kien said it seemed Musk's intention was to restore the account all along.
"But the way he’s gone about it though, he gets to say he’s rescuing democracy and reintroducing a certain type of political discourse on Twitter, even while it overshadows, for the moment, the really tough news that people at Twitter have had in the past couple of weeks," Kien continued.
While the focus might be on Trump's account now, Kien noted that the absence of employees like Ingle to check content will shape Twitter users' experiences.
“Those losses of personnel are going to be felt,” Kien emphasized.
Ingle described Musk's decision to let Trump back on the platform as "incredibly upsetting," noting she and her colleagues in content moderation worked hard to keep Twitter safe for users.
"[Trump's] return is an example of the growing toxicity and abuse on the platform since Musk’s acquisition and will have serious consequences for our democracy," Ingle said.
Ingle likened the workforce cuts at Twitter to firing all the maintenance staff working in a large building: the building will still remain standing but no one will be there to clean, fix leaks, or repair broken parts.
"Without enough data scientists to continue to update these models, these things don't run," she said, "and without the human workforce to catch those things, you will begin to see more and more misinformation, abuse, other undesirable things."
Ingle, now without a job, worries about meeting expenses living in San Francisco.
"I have 2 children, I want to be able to provide a nice Christmas for them," Ingle said.
"I am very worried about my future here and the future of my children," she continued.
