X has rapidly shed safety-focused staff and reinstated thousands of banned accounts since it was acquired by Elon Musk, creating a “perfect storm”, according to Australia’s eSafety Commissioner.

In figures provided to the eSafety Commissioner and released publicly on Thursday, X (formerly Twitter) revealed it had reinstated over 6,100 previously banned accounts in Australia since it was acquired by Elon Musk in October 2022.

Of these accounts, just under 200 were suspended for hateful conduct violations.

At the same time, X was rapidly offloading its staff who were focused on safety on the social media platform.

Since the acquisition, the number of global trust and safety staff at X has reduced by a third, while there has been an 80 per cent reduction in the number of safety engineers.

At the time of Musk’s X takeover, there were 279 safety engineers at the company.

By May the following year, this had fallen to just 55.

At the same time, the number of moderators directly employed by X has dropped by more than half, and the number of global public policy staff has been slashed by nearly 80 per cent.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said these cuts and the reinstatement of banned accounts has created a “bit of a perfect storm”.

“If you let the worst offenders back on while at the same time significantly reduce trust and safety personnel whose job it is to protect users from harm, there are clear concerns about the implications for the safety of users,” Inman Grant said.

X has previously provided estimates of these layoffs and reinstatements, but this is the first time it has revealed specific figures in relation to them.

In the Asia-Pacific region, there has been a 45 per cent reduction in trust and safety staff, and a 73 per cent reduction in public policy staff.

Delays in responding to user reports

The reduction in safety staff led to delays in responding to user reports of hate speech on X, the figures reveal.

Since the acquisition, the response times to hateful tweets has slowed by 20 per cent, while the response time for hateful direct messages has slowed by 75 per cent.

This means that users are not receiving a response to their reports for up to 28 hours.

The figures also reveal that X has no dedicated full-time staff for hateful conduct issues, or a specific team covering these issues.

“It is almost inevitable that any social media platform will become more toxic and less safe for users if you combine significant reductions to safety and local public policy personnel with thousands of account reinstatements of previously banned users,” Inman Grant said.

The figures were provided by X to the eSafety Commissioner in response to a legal notice under the Online Safety Act requiring it to provide specific information on actions taken to meet the Australian government’s Basic Online Safety Expectations in relation to online hate and enforcing the company’s own hateful conduct policy.

Australia vs X

The eSafety Commissioner has also commenced civil penalty proceedings against X for its alleged failure to comply with an earlier reporting notice from February last year after the Basic Online Safety Expectations in relation to child sexual exploitation, and abuse material and activity on X.

X was handed an infringement notice of $610,500 in September for this failure to comply.

In November last year X was kicked out of Australia’s voluntary misinformation code following a decision by an independent complaints subcommittee.

X was removed as a signatory to the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation after it was found to have committed a “serious breach” of the code by providing no avenue for users to report misinformation or disinformation in relation to politics throughout last year’s referendum on a Voice to Parliament.