Elon Musk To Set up New Content Moderation Hub in Texas

Austin, Texas, stands strong as a technology and innovation hub, and Elon Musk is adding more power to the region with his plans to set up a content moderation center for X, per a Bloomberg report.

According to Joe Benarroch, the company’s head of business operations, X plans to employ 100 full-time staff for a new content moderation headquarters in Austin. The region is not a new spot for Musk, as he already has tens of thousands of employees working at the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin.

When this new office opens is yet to be confirmed, however when it does open, the key priority for its employees, according to Benarroch, will be cracking down on child sexual exploitation linked to content and enforcing X’s other rules, such as restrictions on hate speech.

Benarroch said, “X does not have a line of business focused on children, but it’s important that we make these investments to keep stopping offenders from using our platform for any distribution or engagement with CSE content.”

Users need to be at least 13 years old to be on X, and the company explained that under 1% of its daily users are between 13 and 17 years old.

Since Elon took over X in October 2022, he has faced criticism from users for his relaxed approach to the social media platform’s trust and safety functions. Shortly after his takeover, he laid off hundreds of content moderators and staff on the content moderation team, even though advertisers were starting to get concerned about the increase in hate speech on X and dropping off.

Musk referred to himself as a “free speech absolutist” and faulted the platform, which was previously known as Twitter, for “failing to adhere to free speech principles,” which he explained “fundamentally undermines democracy.”

The new office in Austin comes into place after the tech mogul tried to obstruct a Californian law that regulates online content moderation. The new law would require social media companies to publicly post information about how content is moderated in extensive annual reports.

With the heavily reduced content moderation resource and a rapid rise in concerning posts, X has faced challenges in growing its advertising revenue. This new office plan might mean Musk is realigning his strategy to gain more trust from advertisers.