Sources: Twitter cut ~4,400 of its ~5,500 contract staff on November 12, which is expected to significantly impact content moderation and core infrastructure

Update: company sources tell me that yesterday Twitter eliminated ~4,400 of its ~5,500 contract employees, with cuts expected to have significant impact to content moderation and the core infrastructure services that keep the site up and running. People inside are stunned.

@caseynewton 2022-11-14 Casey Newton

Context & Ripple Effects

Twitter had already laid off about half of its employees on November 5, and the reported contractor reductions began with cuts across moderation and other contractor functions. The scale now reported turns a staffing reduction into an operational-capacity issue for services that depend on contract labor.

Earlier Twitter layoffs in 2015 and 2016 focused on smaller portions of the workforce, including sales and marketing; these cuts reach the moderation and infrastructure work needed to run the platform.

First-order effects

Twitter loses roughly 4,400 contract workers, immediately shrinking capacity for content moderation and core infrastructure services.

Second-order effects

Remaining Twitter employees and contractors must absorb work previously handled by the eliminated workforce, concentrating pressure on the teams responsible for keeping the service available and enforcing its rules.

Third-order effects

The cuts underscore how deeply Twitter's day-to-day safeguards and reliability depend on contingent labor: reducing that layer can alter platform operations, not merely reduce overhead.
Subsequent trust-and-safety team reductions reinforce a pattern of capacity being removed from moderation functions alongside broader workforce cuts.

The trend: Twitter's cost cutting is moving beyond corporate headcount to the contractor workforce that supports platform reliability and content governance.

Discussion

@reckless Nilay Patel on x
It is incredible how many smart people are quietly whispering that Elon has to be destroying Twitter on purpose
@caseynewton Casey Newton on x
Getting word that a large number of number of Twitter contractors were just laid off this afternoon with no notice, both in the US and abroad. Functions affected appear to include content moderation, real estate, and marketing, among others
@caseynewton Casey Newton on x
You don't have to treat people this way https://twitter.com/...
@caseynewton Casey Newton on x
One manager just posted in Slack:"one of my contractors just got deactivated without notice in the middle of making critical changes to our child safety workflows" Working to learn more, email me for my Signal.
@internethippo @internethippo on x
My team of 3,000 talented employees has been working around the clock and we're excited to announce they're finally getting close to solving the problem I created
@mat Mat Honan on x
Aaaaaand this is the tweet that got me downloading my archive. https://twitter.com/...
@caseynewton Casey Newton on x
Contractors aren't being notified at all, they're just losing access to Slack and email. Managers figured it out when their workers just disappeared from the system. They heard nothing from their leaders
@karlitaliliana Karla Monterroso on x
Just a reminder that Black and Latinx workers makeup about 9 to 10% of full-time positions in tech but 25% of white collar subcontractors. https://twitter.com/...
@benedictevans Benedict Evans on x
On that basis Twitter has gone from ~13k people to just under 5k. https://twitter.com/...
@chrislhayes Chris Hayes on x
I downloaded my archive this week, and recommend everyone do the same. https://twitter.com/...
@carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x
A charitable take is that he's doing the CEO version of a sys admin unplugging all the servers then seeing if anyone complains then turning those back on. Cut to the bone then only add back only what clearly is extremely necessary. It's risky and lacks empathy but could work. htt…
@gergelyorosz Gergely Orosz on x
Scoop: Twitter went into a stricter-than-ever-before change freeze starting a few hours ago. Not only are deploys not allowed, but Git is now readonly by default (!) The mandate is coming from the infra team, “until further notice.” Here's why this is an odd one:
@mslopatto Elizabeth Lopatto on x
anyone else notice a lot more crypto spam lately? https://twitter.com/...
@parismarx Paris Marx on x
Giving Musk the benefit of the doubt is so ingrained in tech media. It's deeply disturbing. https://twitter.com/...
@garywhitta Gary Whitta on x
Twitter laying off contractors without warning. Oh well it's not like online child safety is a big deal, right? https://twitter.com/...
@yelix @yelix on x
don't know how someone can do this right before the holidays and live with themselves https://twitter.com/...
@zoeschiffer @zoeschiffer on x
Twitter contractors are also losing their healthcare on Monday — with roughly 48 hours notice. Workers with ongoing health conditions, and some who are pregnant, are scrambling. Information about COBRA is going out via snail mail. https://twitter.com/...
@andrewconnell @andrewconnell on x
@brianmcc nailed in the Ride Home podcast on Friday: everything you'd do to fix Twitter & the current issues: Elon is doing the exact opposite. Maybe this was the plan all along 😢 https://twitter.com/...
@sifill_ Sherrilyn Ifill on x
But in approving this sale, the board by corporate law standards fulfilled its “fiduciary” responsibilities because it ensured profits for shareholders. Something has to change. https://twitter.com/...
@mistresssnowphd @mistresssnowphd on x
this is going to turn into a mass performance of marina abramović's rhythm 0 so fast https://twitter.com/...
@quinnae_moon Katherine Cross on x
As I said the other night, most frontline mods are contractors. The people who actually assess and act on content. So are a lot of their managers. Every single mod I've interviewed has been a third-party contractor. https://twitter.com/...
@gartenberg Michael Gartenberg on x
“Of course, given his followers, Musk's of noxious response to a US senator will be considered heroic and applauded” after all, Twitter is fun again, unless of course you make fun of Musk which is obviously not funny at all
@film_girl @film_girl on x
Layoffs happen and they are hard and terrible for everyone. Cruelty is a choice. Never forget that. https://twitter.com/...
@erratarob @erratarob on x
Twitter needs better scalability in the underlying tech of delivering tweets. But it also needs company-wide scaling for things like content moderation, verification of accounts, combating bots, and so on.
@hankgreen Hank Green on x
@CaseyNewton Jesus, that's a lot of fuckin contractors.
@chrisgeidner @chrisgeidner on x
It's kind of unbelievable, but I really do feel like some critical piece of Twitter is just going to break one day. And there's not going to be anyone left who knows how to fix it. https://twitter.com/...
@martinsfp @martinsfp on x
I'm starting to think he doesn't want Twitter to work. https://twitter.com/...
@zoeschiffer @zoeschiffer on x
Twitter laid off roughly 4,400 of 5,500 contractors yesterday, per Casey: https://twitter.com/...
@gartenberg Michael Gartenberg on x
Someone in the war room must have told him “act quick before they try to unionize, besides content, moderation is overrated after all, free speech, right?” https://www.engadget.com/...
@parismarx Paris Marx on x
Twitter had almost as many contractors as it had employees. Elon Musk just cut 4/5 of them, and that's going to have big consequences for content moderation at a moment when Twitter's already struggling to keep up and launching a paid blue check service that requires more work. h…
@ranimolla Rani Molla on x
Remember 2 weeks ago (50 years in Musk time) when Musk assured advertisers the site wouldn't become a “free-for-all hellscape”? Hellscape incoming! https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x
Firing 80% of contractors is actually scarier than firing 50% of employees since it likely means low level unglamorous jobs like dealing with user reports & content moderation became unstaffed in many areas overnight. This feels more like sabotage than cost cuts at this point. ht…
@jordanzakarin Jordan Zakarin on x
This tracks with how Elon Musks treats contractors at Tesla. Most of Teslas's factory workers are contractors, who are bussed in from far away towns, paid substandard wages, and get discarded shortly before they'd have to be hired full-time. https://twitter.com/...
@thesnarkygent @thesnarkygent on x
So Twitter is running closer and closer to a skeleton crew a week before the World Cup begins and load on the site will reach what could be its yearly peak https://twitter.com/...
@timnitgebru @timnitgebru on x
People commenting saying that was a lot of contractors must not know about how the tech industry runs at all. Who do you think does any moderation of social media? https://twitter.com/...
@danushman Dan Ushman on x
I mean, let's be honest... Twitter was a bloated cobweb of inefficiency and unwinding the mess is going to be painful. I say that as a twitter advertiser. Legit the least efficient business I've ever worked with. If I was Elon, I'd prob have done the same - although slower. https…
@esqueer_ Alejandra Caraballo on x
Twitter is about to be overrun by CSAM. Twitter fired nearly all of its contractors that do content moderation, many of whom monitor CSAM. This is going to be a disaster. https://twitter.com/...
@mattbc @mattbc on x
Expect whatever is left of moderation to fall apart https://twitter.com/...
@rmondello @rmondello on x
Just terrible. https://twitter.com/...
@davezatz Dave Zatz on x
Nobody should be stunned by anything at this point. https://twitter.com/...
@joshuaogundu Josh on x
Some contractors, meanwhile, are concerned about getting paid for the last two weeks as a number of contractors ended up on teams with no full-time Twitter employees, leaving no one to sign off on their time cards https://www.axios.com/...
@kimballscott @kimballscott on x
This is peak brutal ineffectiveness https://twitter.com/...
@sifill_ Sherrilyn Ifill on x
Meanwhile inside Twitter... https://twitter.com/...
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
One thing I have heard from *multiple* people at Twitter is that the crew that Elon has brought in appears to delight in being cruel. Not just in the layoffs. In everything. https://twitter.com/...
@sokane1 Sean O'Kane on x
Things continue to go great at Twitter dot com https://twitter.com/...
@inafried Ina Fried on x
Many contractors' status has been in limbo since Twitter cut half its staff earlier this month, with some not knowing whom to even report to, since their counterparts inside the company have been laid off. https://www.axios.com/...
@seldo @seldo on x
How many times does Musk have to show that he's an asshole until people stop idolizing him. https://twitter.com/...
@rklau Rick Klau on x
You don't have to treat people this way, and more to the point, you shouldn't treat people this way https://twitter.com/...
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
Yup. That'll bring the advertisers back. https://twitter.com/...
@inafried Ina Fried on x
Now some worry about their final paychecks since their teams no longer have any full-time Twitter employees to sign off on their time cards, sources tell Axios. https://www.axios.com/...
@carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x
When looking at how Musk has treated employees and contractors, one can only conclude that the cruelty is the point. You don't have to treat people this way just because you overpaid for a tech company on a whim. https://twitter.com/...
@paleofuture Matt Novak on x
Twitter still actively falling apart https://twitter.com/...
@inafried Ina Fried on x
@mmasnick @jimprosser And some are worried they won't even get paid https://twitter.com/...
@deliprao Delip Rao on x
I believed in giving time, and “trust the process”, but I've updated my priors now and I'm convinced this platform is on a downward spiral. My first job at Twitter was at trust & safety and I cannot overstate how seriously such issues were taken even when Twitter was small. https…
@kimcrayton1 @kimcrayton1 on x
No one should be surprised by this...you can't cause this much chaos and destruction if cruelty wasn't the point... https://twitter.com/...
@amyhoy Amy Hoy on x
well, you can't say elon isn't consistent. the approach to child safety is “drive faster.” https://twitter.com/...

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